


i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

by cygnus (sunsprite)



Series: to the lonely love child [2]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Small Town, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Coming of Age, Found Family, Friendship, Insomnia, Loneliness, M/M, Mutual Pining, Personal Growth, Slow Burn, Some Fluff, can read as stand-alone, jaemin centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-08-27 18:44:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 45,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16707979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunsprite/pseuds/cygnus
Summary: Jaemin wonders if it is worth staying in a town that cradles an unfulfilled promise he still finds himself wishing for. But in this town of impermanent dreams and impermanent people, Renjun is the one who brings him down from the clouds and back onto the ground.





	1. a warm ghost

**Author's Note:**

> after 38472 scrapped drafts, let's get the ball rollin !! jaemin was fun and challenging to write ,, if he was a song, he'd be a dichotomous happy-sounding song with very sad lyrics ,,
> 
> anyways, ive written this in a way so this can be read as stand-alone so u dont have to read the first one (but if uve read the 1st fic, there might be familiar references ^^) 
> 
> the title is a line from e.e. cumming's poem
> 
> thank u to izzy for reading this over and inspiring motivation in me! <3
> 
> now available in [vietnamese](https://clockbirdy.wordpress.com/2019/03/23/i-carry-your-heart-i-carry-it-in-my-heart-foreword)! (thank u to @itsdua on twt!)

Every step forward is a slip backwards.

That’s what it always felt like whenever he stepped into the ice rink as a child. He would struggle to stay on the flat edge of his skates to move forward, but the warm hand outstretched towards him would wrap around his and guide him around the rink. The speed, the excitement, the frigid wind burning his cheeks and filling his lungs with a cold sense of wonderment - they were the frontispiece to a childhood Jaemin doesn’t remember anymore. Memories fade. The face belonging to that warm hand has long ago dissolved into a mixture of water and oil. 

But Jaemin keeps the tender memory in his heart anyways. He keeps the ice skates that no longer fit him in the very back of his closet, forgotten like a ring of dust beneath a vase - hoping that one day, he will finally have a reason to replace them.

i.

Renjun’s shophouse is an eclectic narrow building with timber doors and wooden louvered shutter windows seated past the paifang that heralded the lively Chinatown. Jaemin glances up at the sky that resembled a bleeding heart, wrapped around by contrails that lingered among the deep corals. He hoists up his backpack and walks through the opened doors, greeted by the smell of earthly incense and an unattainable sense of belonging.

“Jaemin. Nice to see you again,” Ms. Huang says she looks up from the counter, cradling a glass terrarium in her hands. The ground floor of the Huang’s shophouse was a family antique business run by Renjun’s mother that, despite its small size, was spaciously teeming of fine china and vintage novelties. Most of the business was contributed by Mark’s grandpa, who was an enthusiast of antiquity, to which Jaemin found rather endearing. 

“The sentiment is very much returned.” Jaemin shoots her a charming smile. He carefully makes his way around the fragile items, always feeling a bit too big and bulky whenever he does so. “Renjun didn’t come to school today. Is it okay if I visit him for a bit?” 

“Only if you’re careful. He’s got the cold.” She places the glass terrarium down onto the counter. Jaemin glances at the quaint little green world entrapped within a dome glass, wondering if it looks as confined as it did from the outside. “Will you make him some cooling tea as well? I can’t leave the shop unattended and all the others are out being workaholics.” 

Jaemin gives her the thumbs up. With permission, he walks around the wooden partition in the back and heads past the dining hall to the kitchen, familiarity in the pitter patter of his steps. He fills up the kettle with water and waits for it to boil, and once it does, he adds the packet of cooling tea into a cup and pours hot water over it afterwards. While mixing the drink with a spoon, Jaemin looks at the angled ray of sunlight spilling past the shutters. Bright and monotonous. 

With the tea, he heads up the wooden stairs. He passes through the corridor and knocks on Renjun’s bedroom door, chiming, “Delivery service!” 

He hears a grunt followed by shuffling footsteps. Then the door opens and Renjun appears, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and a tissue box in his arms. His complexion is rather wan but his nose is red from constant friction, and there is a faint expression of disgruntled annoyance written across his face. “What are _you_ doing here?” 

“Is that how you’re supposed to greet a loved one?” Jaemin pouts. 

“Shut up. Aren’t you supposed to be volunteering or something?”

“I said I was busy after school today.” He ignores Renjun’s quizzical expression and pushes past him to enter his room despite his half-hearted protests, and places the cup of cooling tea down on the desk beside his wrinkled bed. Renjun grabs a tissue out from the box in his hands and blows into it. Jaemin winces at the harsh sound. 

“What’s that?” Renjun asks. His voice is nasally. 

“Lang cha,” Jaemin tries brightly. Renjun snorts but ends up coughing. 

“ _Liang_ cha,” Renjun corrects him. Jaemin frowns. Renjun laughs at his dramatically crestfallen face and brings the cup to his lips, taking a small sip. “Thanks.”

Jaemin smiles in response. Renjun hugs the warm cup in his hands, letting the steam rise up to his face. He sniffs and grimaces. Jaemin assumes it must have been an unpleasant feeling. “God, I hate being sick and the school year barely started. I blame this all on that one asshole in the bus that didn’t cover his hands when he coughed directly into my face.”

“Now, now, Renjun. As pacifists, we shouldn’t harbor vindictive feelings towards unsanitary strangers on public transit.”

“Fuck off. No, but seriously. Why are you even here?” Renjun slants him a dissatisfied glance. “Not even the others are here. Not even _Mark_ is here.” 

Jaemin feigns hurt, placing a hand over his heart. “How can I go a day without seeing one of my favourite persons in the world?” 

“Depends if you can ever go a day without your empty flirting.”

Jaemin smiles. His voice is soft as he answers, “You know it's never empty.”

“Whatever. Well, if you get sick, it’s not my fault.” Renjun rolls his eyes. He climbs back into bed and cocoons himself with more blankets, expressing much of his agony through a dull humming noise he was making. Jaemin laughs, going over to sit down on the floor beside his bed. Jaemin places his hand besides Renjun’s. His birthmark looks like a watercolour stain. Jaemin makes sure not to touch him. 

Jaemin likes Renjun’s hands. Renjun does a lot of magic with them: painting, drawing, handling fine china with utmost caution. His fingers are delicate but in no way fragile. Jaemin wonders what it would be like to hold Renjun’s hand - if it could be soft and calloused at the same time that Jaemin imagines it to be from the way he creates newfound wonders. 

Jaemin glances at his own hand. Not exactly slender-fingered, but nimble like a pianist; rough and cracked from washing dishes in scalding hot water without gloves. There’s flayed skin below his fingernails and he pulls his sleeve down lower. Renjun probably wouldn’t want to hold his hand. Jaemin smiles a bit wistfully to himself. 

“Hey,” Renjun murmurs, breaking the silence between them, “sorry you can’t sleep over.” 

“Don’t even worry about it.” Jaemin sits up, leaning on his elbow now as he shoots Renjun a reassuring smile. “I’ll be fine on my own, no sweat.” 

“Don’t wait up for him.” 

Jaemin snickers. “You know me. I’m used to it.” 

Renjun doesn’t answer. He observes him in a manner that makes Jaemin’s skin crawl. Renjun is sharp in a way that is hawkish - _understanding_. Even in the total darkness of his eyes, there is a clarity to them that holds a knowledge of the unknown like tiny diamonds in a window of complete abyss. Jaemin doesn’t know how to feel about that. Fear, maybe, for Renjun is also unknowable. 

Jaemin averts his gaze and stands up, dusting off his jeans. “Should I read you a bedtime story so you can fall back to sleep? Granted it’s still rather early, but you need all the rest you can get. How about Peter Pan and Neverland?”

The slight tension immediately thaws with Jaemin’s flippancy. Renjun looks annoyed again. “If I told you I have a piece of dirt in my eye, will you move?” 

“You wound me.” Jaemin laughs. He scoops up his backpack and throws the strap around his shoulder. “Get well soon, Renjun. It’s kinda lonely without you.” 

“Oh, don’t be dramatic. You have the others.” 

Jaemin wonders. He likes to think he does. He puts on a cheerful smile, lilting his voice into a humorous tone. “Yeah, you're right, Renjun. I guess I just miss people easily. But still, hopefully I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Renjun’s gaze is quiet. Heavy. He mumbles to Jaemin's back, “Yeah. See you.”

Jaemin leaves his room and skips back down the stairs, passing by the partition. He finds Ms. Huang squinting at the shelves filled with ornamental decor behind her, the glass terrarium still in her slender hands. She hears his entrance and turns to look at him. “How’s the boy?”

“Sick and miserable.”

“That’s what he gets for wearing such little clothes. The weather is getting colder.” She tsks. She stops and surveys Jaemin from head to toe and narrows her eyes. “You too. Why aren’t you wearing a jacket? And have you been sleeping well?” 

“I’m immune to the cold.” Jaemin looks down at his sweater with a shrug. “And I get as much sleep as I can, Ms. Huang.”

“So no sleep?” Ms. Huang shakes her head. “Come over again some other time. I will make you more date tea.” She looks back to the shelves with a troubled look, tapping the terrarium with a finger. “You know about Renjun’s plan after school here?”

“Yeah, I heard already. I’m happy for him.” Jaemin stretches his mouth as wide as possible, hoping that if he were to exaggerate such a happy motion, the happy feeling would become genuine too. Ms. Huang doesn’t notice his obvious strain and manages a slight tilt of the edge of her lips. Jaemin passes by the counter and points at the empty space along the window sill of the timber window with iron bars. “I think that’s a good place to put it.” 

She hums. “You have a good eye.” 

Jaemin smiles. He says his farewells and leaves the shophouse. He scans the road and finds that his bus is almost at his stop, so he breaks into a sprint up a few blocks ahead to catch it or else he’d have to wait at least twenty minutes for the next one. Jaemin makes it in time when the bus stops at the red light, and once he gets on, he lets an old lady carrying a bundle of newspapers take his seat. The crowded bus that lingers of cigarette smoke leaves downtown and Jaemin looks out the window.

The bus passes the bungalow house he and his parents used to live in, the arcade and the bookstore where Mark works, and the bakery that offers him free egg tarts at the end of the day. The sun hugs the horizon in the distance, its light filtering through the windows and painting his skin warmly in the autumn radar. 

Jaemin thinks that the changing hues of the leaves and the sharp bite of the wind that leaves his skin chapped and eyes stinging is an irreplaceable human experience. If he can live in a dimension where autumn is endless, Jaemin would want to stay there forever. He would see the limitless orange sky everyday. 

The low droning of the bus is like white noise to his ears, and suddenly, the world comes to a halt and begins to rest upon his eyelids. Jaemin yawns into his hands. He wonders if in that other dimension of eternal autumn, there is tenderness. 

And he wonders most of all if in that other dimension of eternal orange, Renjun would stay.

ii.

To Jaemin, his father, a life after high school, the ghost in his kitchen, the stars, and the sea by the pier are unreachable things he’s grown to accept and live with. But if Jaemin thinks about it deeply enough, Renjun has always been unreachable too. 

From the very moment Donghyuck and Jeno brought them all together into an unruly constellation of sorts in their second year of high school, Renjun was still a stranger with the Peppa Pig t-shirts to Jaemin. They were merely acquaintances with mutual friends and Renjun didn’t seem enthusiastic about reciprocating Jaemin’s attempts at growing closer either, especially when Jaemin had once told Renjun that he liked his name and all Renjun said to him in a flat voice was, “Thanks. I got it for my birthday.”

But there was something else about Renjun that unsettled Jaemin. No matter how closely Jaemin observed him, Renjun was an unyielding and unsolvable riddle. And he still is. He has a demeanor of inscrutability with more depth than the pages of an old literary oeuvre. 

The both of them would have stayed surface-level friends if Renjun didn't find out the truth about Jaemin’s trouble with sleeping. A pattern of unwarranted microsleeping and yawning every now and then during their group hangouts and the classes they shared was not overlooked by someone as acutely attentive as Renjun. Jaemin thought he was keeping up a spotless facade when one day, Renjun dropped a box of chamomile tea into his lap and listlessly said, “It helps.” 

Though Jaemin was more or less hot with shame, Renjun wasn’t fazed. He never prodded past his boundaries and what he was unwilling to talk about. What began as a simple act of generosity gradually developed into a quiet, genuine friendship born out of mutual respect rather than mutual friends. Then, with a tongue loose from lack of sleep, Jaemin told him about his dad by accident, Renjun offered a sleepover in response, and the rest became pretty much history. 

And that is how he came to know Renjun, the unassuming quiet boy with the brightest thoughts and sharpest tongue who doodles misshapen heads with big eyes along the margins of his notebook; Renjun, whose face lights up as though he saw the secrets of the endless sea of stars and collected them into his smile at the mention of life outside of planet earth; Renjun, who is forthright and outspoken and isn’t afraid to tell the painful truth - he is the boy, for some reason, that Jaemin wants to reach.

But it’s a wistful but childish thought. The ghost in his kitchen reminds him everyday that just like it, Renjun will also leave. The others will leave too.

 

 

It was in the late summer of sundrenched backs and peach lemonade before their last year of high school that Renjun had let everyone know about the spontaneous news - just a few days right before Jaemin’s seventeenth birthday and after Mark’s eighteenth had passed. 

They were at the basketball court. Underneath the dappled shade of a zelkova tree, Jaemin watched Donghyuck jump up from his starfish sprawl on the asphalt ground before tackling Renjun into a celebratory hug. Jeno rolled over and clung onto one of Renjun’s legs, congratulating him in the midst of his exhaustion, and Mark knocked over his water bottle when he threw his arms up into the air to cheer. Renjun was shoving Donghyuck’s face away while trying to kick at Jeno’s face, frustrated with the heat that came from their warm skinship as their loud voices reverberated through the court. And in the centre of such elation, Jaemin could not find it within himself to feel, in any ounce, the same way as the others. 

It was strange. His chest felt strange. It felt as though he was fixed in spot, receding back into his stagnation, as the world around him sped up without heed and had become nothing but a blur to his eyes. 

“Jaemin?”

He blinked, and the world slowed down. Renjun had a faint trace of concern in his expression. Mark was watching him. The stone cold anvil of guilt sunk to his stomach when he realized he hadn’t reacted at all. 

“Congratulations, Renjun.” Jaemin quickly smiled up at him, voice quiet. “I knew you’d be able to get in. I always knew you could. I’m happy for you.” And he watched the edges of Renjun’s mouth slowly curve into a bright-eyed smile, unusually soft for someone who wielded words like a sharp weapon.

“We definitely need to plan a celebration for this. And you better still keep in contact with us when you’re back in China, Renjun. God, think about the time zones.” Donghyuck complained, shaking Renjun by the shoulders. “But thank fuck you’re gonna be outta this shitty town way before us.”

“You would too, Hyuck, if you studied more,” Jeno piped up. 

“Shut your rotten cabbage hole, Jeno. Of course I study.” Donghyuck flipped him off. “Not everyone is capable of having their early admissions application get accepted into a top university like Mr. Smartass over here.”

“Hyuckie,” Mark supplied, “watching vine compilations at three in the morning is not studying. Texting me in the middle of the night to quote them is also not studying.” 

“Alright, now that sounds more like a _you_ problem because that’s what you get for being stuck with me.” Donghyuck stuck his tongue out at him and knocked their shoulders together. Mark did the same, laughing.

After an exchange of lighthearted quips, everyone except Jaemin returned back to the court for another round. Renjun, however, stayed behind. He sat beside Jaemin on the line markers of the asphalt ground. Their knees touched. Renjun twisted the hem of his t-shirt until it wrinkled.

“Will you leave too?” 

Jaemin watched as Donghyuck yelled foul at Jeno who had elbowed and knocked the ball out of his hands and succeeded in doing a lay up, running to hide behind a laughing Mark who merely called Donghyuck a sore loser. Jaemin wondered. He imagined what it would be like to leave everything behind - the memories, the melancholy staring right at him from the crooks of his ceiling, the hopeless hope. But he thought about his father - how they were still waiting for something that would never return. 

Jaemin smiled. “I don’t want to leave home.” 

Renjun stared at him. “Jaemin, you’re not obligated to stay.”

“Of course I know that.” Jaemin got up from the ground, patting the dust away from his shorts. “But Donghyuck is right. Not everyone is like you.” 

He turned around before he could see Renjun’s reaction and ran back to court. Jaemin raised his hand and called for a new game. The sun that was in the pinnacle of the sky burned brighter, hotter - heavier as it weighed down on his back.

iii.

His dad isn’t home yet.

It’s raining. The orchestra of the downpour drenched the town in thunderclaps. The faint glow of the streetlamp outside illuminates the inside of his room as he stares up at his all too familiar ceiling and traces out nonexistent constellations. Time passes by in slow motion like the suspended silence of a glass about to hit the floor, watching the clock on his phone slowly turn from _2:47AM_ to _2:48AM_ to _2:49AM_ to _2:50AM_.

Jaemin puts his phone away and turns on his side. He thinks about everything and nothing. A palindrome is a word that is spelled the same way from both ends. Jaemin racks his brain for some. Level. Radar. Racecar. Noon. Refer. Eye. Wow. Pop. He hears the clinking of cookware from the neighbors below. Some shouting. A slam of the door. Jaemin breathes in the smell of mildew. He shuts his eyes and thinks about theories and mathematical applications he has no ounce of understanding in. His ears wait for the sound of the door clicking open, but the only thing he still hears is the sky drowning the earth. 

Jaemin checks his phone again after a restless fit. It’s only _2:54AM_. 

He’s tired.

He finally throws his blanket aside and gets out of bed. He puts on a windbreaker over his pajamas and heads out into the living room, nearly slipping on a puddle on his way out. 

“Shit,” he mutters. There’s a leak on the ceiling, dripping pellets of rain onto the wooden floor. Jaemin quickly grabs a towel from the kitchen and grabs the bucket from underneath the sink, emptying out the plastic bags they keep them in. He wipes the floor as dry as possible and places the bucket underneath the leak. Once he’s done, he grabs his keys and heads outside. 

He leaves the apartment. As soon as he takes one step out he’s immediately drenched, but Jaemin finds it hard to care when he’s been awake for more than twenty-four hours. 

Without any destination in mind, Jaemin runs. 

He runs until his lungs are on fire and his legs ache to the point of being unable to take a step further. Jaemin doesn’t know how long and how far he runs, but his head is spinning by the time the rain finally lets up, spilling the dimmest afterglow of the moonlight retiring into the cascade of a murky sunrise. He's entirely soaked when Jaemin returns to the front of the building, out of breath and dead exhausted. His eyes are so heavy. He doesn’t have the energy to think.

Jaemin half-expects to see his father sleeping on the couch and the simple dinner Jaemin had cooked left uneaten when he goes back to their unit, but he’s merely welcomed by the empty silence that has become a close friend. Jaemin shrugs out of his wet windbreaker and throws it into the overflowing laundry basket and collapses onto the couch. He's too tired to shower and change out. 

His eyes are drooping. And as soon as he closes them, exhaustion finally weighs him down into a restless sleep.

iv.

When Jaemin wakes up four hours later, there is a blanket covering him. The food on the table is gone and he is still alone.

v.

It's the seventh time he's yawned and the tenth time he’s sneezed. It's barely the second period. Jeno shoots him a vague look of curiosity as he closes his locker, hiking up his heavy backpack after jamming all his textbooks into it. And the Oxford dictionary. He isn't sure if he hallucinated that part, though.

Jeno says, “Uh. You okay? Your bags look so heavy they look like they're about to hit the floor.”

“Shouldn't I be saying that to you?” Jaemin blinks, bleary-eyed. 

“I was talking about your _eye_ bags.” Jeno says. “You sound sick too. Did you catch a cold? I bet it was from Renjun. I _told_ you it’s a bad idea to visit sick people.” 

“Oh, golly gee whiz. You caught me.” Jaemin laughs, but it doesn't sound like his usual laugh. It was croaky and dull. Tired. He sees the faint concern in Jeno’s eyes and his heart sinks to his stomach. Jaemin doesn't want that. 

He quickly covers his crumbling facade with a bright grin he hopes didn't come across as obviously forced, desperately trying to bring back a smile on Jeno’s face. “I'm fine, Jeno. Seriously. I just found another new show to binge-watch. I got so invested that I forgot to close the window when it was raining last night and, well. Here I am.”

Jeno groans but a disbelieving laugh escapes his curved mouth, and something in Jaemin’s chest lightens. “Go take Advil or something. You're unbelievable.”

Jaemin snickers and puts an arm around his shoulder. Jeno blocks his face from his. “Don't get _me_ sick, man.”

“You and your allergies towards public displays of affection.” Jaemin clicks his tongue, shaking his head. “I find it funny how you mourn over your singleness but you can’t even handle an ounce of friendly skinship.” 

“Okay, for the record you asshole, I don’t _mourn_ \- at least, not anymore. In fact, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m very much happy by myself. What? People can change and discover a lot in after a few months! It’s not like I grew up with a soulmate of my own like Hyuck.” Jeno huffs in response to Jaemin's dubious expression. 

Jaemin smiles. “Mark and Donghyuck have always been an interesting pair.”

“Tell me about it. They haven’t changed one bit, though, after they got together. I had to sit through the entirety of Chemistry listening to Hyuck complain about how Mark got gum in his hair after he accidentally spit it out from laughing too hard.” He rolls his eyes. “Thank God that’s the only time I get to hear him complain. But it sucks that I’ve got the whole trade program in carpentry up my ass that I barely even have the time to hang out with you or the others.” 

Jaemin waves away the thought. “The program was something you’ve been dying to get in since, like. Tenth grade, Jeno. Come on. Don’t let me get in the way.” 

Jeno frowns in puzzlement. “What? You never get in the way, Jaemin.” 

His smile falters at the unexpected sincerity, blinking at Jeno’s unamused expression towards Jaemin’s assumption that Jeno would even think that way. Jaemin can only laugh in response, uncertain at how to accept such an earnest sentiment. “Right, right. I know. I was just - uh. Thinking about your best interests.”

“Hey. That’s cool, but no need to dismiss yourself like that.” Jeno lightly pokes him on the nose. Jaemin nervously smiles. They stop at Jeno’s classroom for his next period, whereas Jaemin’s classroom was just a few doors down. “Anyways, I’ll see you around, Jaemin. Stay away from more sick people, you hear me?”

“Aye aye, captain.” 

Jeno rolls his eyes. Jaemin watches him enter his classroom before he walks down the hall and heads to his own, his mind devoid of complete thought. 

 

 

The rest of his day passes by in a blur with the same old routine. Jaemin daydreams in most of his classes and exhausts himself out as much as possible in gym class. He lets the classmates he barely talks to copy his homework and sits in the library alone with an empty stomach since he gave his lunch money to a fundraising booth outside of the bakery earlier in the morning. Jeno and Donghyuck had club meetings during lunchtime. Renjun didn’t show up today either. 

The performance of shallow conversations with vaguely familiar faces drains him more than usual. He’s become accustomed to catering to his peers and teachers, but with the heaviness of exhaustion dragging him down, he’s finding it a lot harder than usual to get through the day. So, he ends up skipping his last class to take a nap underneath the bleachers of the gymnasium. 

Jisung finds him half an hour later when school ended, jostling him awake. Jaemin blinks groggily and sits up, nearly bashing his head into the metal beams holding up the bleachers. 

“Why are you here, Jaemin?” Jisung knits his brows. He was in his practice clothes, holding a pair of soccer cleats in his hand with a duffel bag hanging over his shoulder. His hair is a bright, coral orange, having taken after Donghyuck’s penchant for colourful hair as a result of - as Donghyuck had called - his exterior rebellious streak, considering Jisung is too much of a goody two shoes to do anything outlandishly terrible. Jaemin wonders if spontaneity is something that runs in their blood.

Jaemin rubs his eyes, a tired smile on his face. “I was taking a nap. I didn’t think I’d crash that bad.” He swipes at the cobweb threaded into his sweater. “Hey, uh. Mind not telling your brother? Or any of our friends, really.”

Jisung purses his lips, shifting from one foot to another. “Fine. I won’t tell them. You’re lucky I don’t hold grudges like my dumbass brother. If I was like Hyuck, I would have probably still been bitter over the fact that you won the bet about him and Mark.”

“Aw, now this is why _you’re_ my favourite, cutie Jisungie. I wish I had a little brother like you,” Jaemin coos and reaches over to pinch his cheek. Jisung huffs and swats his hand away, shooting him a disgruntled glare. Jaemin laughs and watches as Jisung finally runs off to catch up with Chenle for soccer practice, who had been waiting by the padded doors. Chenle is smiling at Jaemin. He doesn’t know why it unnerves him.

With a sigh, Jaemin scoops up his backpack and heads out. The sky is happier today; signs of its heavy downpour the night before was whisked away by a bright, pink sky and dainty cirrus clouds. Autumn is rather fickle. His head feels fuzzy. Jaemin wipes away the snot from his nose and makes sure to not drag his feet when he arrives.

Jaemin lives relatively closeby school, nearing the outskirts of town, but not so much as Donghyuck’s cottage since Jaemin’s apartment is still within the town’s infrastructure. The thrift store was not too far from his home either. It was a vast building situated beside an autoplan broker company that had large trucks come and go in the back to deliver secondhand clothing and donated items. It was, in a sense, almost like a hidden treasure trove. 

When he enters, he sees an old lady - not the kind with feeble limbs and a developed slouch, but the kind who could still run an army kitchen given half a chance - with a neck scarf patterned with daisies at the counter. Her face lights up at the sight of him. “Hello, Jaemin. How are you doing today?”

“I’m doing a lot better now that I’ve seen you.” Jaemin beams. 

Satara laughs, waving him away. “Oh, I’ve heard enough of that sweet talk in my youth. Now, shoo and go help the others. We’ve got a bunch of things to sort out.” 

Jaemin throws her the okay sign. He likes the thrift store: the monotonous repetition of folding clothes, pricing them, and putting things away. Many of the volunteers are old ladies who dote on him since he’s the youngest volunteer. In a way, they look out for him from a distance. And though it brings great warmth to his heart, it also brings him a certain kind of lingering wistfulness - especially when they talk of their grandchildren. 

Jaemin can’t help but think of his own grandparents. He’s been told that he’s met his grandmother once when he had been a toddler, but other than that, he has no other recollection. Jaemin wonders if his grandma and grandpa had cradled his potato-shaped baby head before they had passed. 

Hours of sorting and pricing clothing drifts by rather quickly. The store has quieted down once evening had arrived, but doing inventory all afternoon has kept him distracted from his tired limbs and stuffy nose. Jaemin was rummaging through the boxes of donated items when he pulls out a small glass dome that enclosed a clutter of blue flowers and a coral sky that was as big as his palm. He holds it up into the light, eyeing the quaint disparity between its depth and transparency. 

“Oh, what a shame the person didn’t want to keep such a gem,” Satara laments as she walks out of the kitchen and finds him examining the object. When she sees Jaemin’s blank stare, she launches into a brief explanation, “It’s a paperweight. You use them to put over papers to keep ‘em from flying all over the place. My husband was an avid collector of those.”

Jaemin hums. He admires the changing magnification of the glass dome as he rotates it around in his hands, the bouquet of blue flowers and the gradient colour of the sky shifting as though they were in a gentle breeze. He smiles mostly to himself. “It’s pretty.”

“It is, isn’t it? Maybe we’ll list it off as seven dollars,” Satara says. “Well, you’re off now, sweets. It’s already eight.” 

Jaemin nods. He places the paperweight down and looks at it for another lingering moment before he grabs his things and signs out. After reciprocating all the goodnight wishes, he leaves the thrift store and finds that the sky is no longer pink. The mercury vapor lamps have come on. Underneath the dark, empty sky, Jaemin walks home. 

 

 

Home is another routine. Jaemin showers, cooks dinner and eats alone, leaves food for his dad, does homework, and goes to bed. He doesn’t sleep. He never can until he hears the front door open and the sound of his dad’s footsteps that would alleviate the irrational trepidation cinched around his chest. Jaemin thought he’d exhausted himself enough in the day for sleep to come easier, but his mind is still buzzing with a cacophony of useless thoughts that instill nothing but a vacant fear within his heart. Not even the drowsy effects of the cold syrup he took was enough to knock him out. 

Jaemin grabs his phone. It’s two in the morning. Going out for a run wouldn't be smart, especially since it'll worsen his budding cold. He scrolls through his contacts list. Nobody would be awake. Jeno is a heavy sleeper, Donghyuck doesn't like to be disturbed, and Mark seems to have his own troubles with sleeping as well and Jaemin doesn't want to disrupt that. But Jaemin is just so _tired._

He pulls up a familiar number and hits the dial button. It takes four rings until his call goes through and Jaemin starts. 

“What do you want at fuck o’clock in the night? Or morning. Whatever,” Renjun grumbles. His voice is still nasally. 

Jaemin swallows. He whispers, “I didn’t think you’d pick up. Sorry to wake you.” 

“It’s fine. I was woken up by my dad’s stupidly loud snoring first, anyways. I’m a light sleeper.” Jaemin hears the rustling of his covers in the background. Renjun yawns. “Why’re you still awake, Jaemin?”

“You know me.” Jaemin sits up in his bed, glancing out the window. A halo of the lamp light from outside spills through the glass. 

“No surprises there.” He scoffs. “What do you wanna talk about?”

Jaemin thinks about the dinner table and the chairs collecting dust. He thinks about his father who comes home at the brink of dawn and is never awake when Jaemin is. He thinks about the pair of ice skates in his closet, waiting like a lost and naive child. He thinks about all the things he has to say but no one to tell them to. “Can I tell you about my day?”

Renjun is quiet. The sharpness in his tone is gone when he murmurs, “Yeah, of course.” 

The thing is - Jaemin doesn’t do much. There is a mundaneness to every part of his life that isn’t worth mentioning about at two in the morning. But he does it anyways; he talks about the remarkable mercurial sky streaked in all kinds of pinks painted by a heavenly hand, the kind children raising funds for cancer research outside the bakery, and the paperweight he discovered today at the thrift store that, for some reason, reminded him of the terrarium Ms. Huang had in her hands the other day. But despite his simplicity for uneventful musings, Renjun never fails to listen attentively. He throws a wry remark in from time to time that only makes Jaemin laugh. 

It’s peculiar how hearing Renjun’s voice through the phone makes his ear tickle and warmth pool down all the way from his chest and into his stomach. Jaemin doesn’t know if it’s the disconnected closeness and intimacy that makes his neck tingle as though he could feel his breath near his cheek if he intensely focused on imaging it. And though Renjun is still rather sick, Jaemin finds Renjun’s voice nice to listen to either way. Warm, bright, and gentle. He speaks in measured cadences and has a timbre of an earnest heart. 

And in a life of passing moments and people leaving, Jaemin wishes that Renjun was the one to stay. 

“Hey, Renjun,” Jaemin says. 

“What?”

With the trembling of stars in his heart, he murmurs, “I’m going to miss you when you leave.” 

In the vast silence between them, all he hears is Renjun’s breaths. Jaemin watches his clock blink. A minute passes until Renjun finally mumbles, “Go to sleep, Jaemin.” 

Jaemin smiles. There is a pang in his chest. He doesn’t know why. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. Goodnight, Renjun.” 

He ends the call. He puts his phone aside on his nightstand. A ghost stares at him from the lonely corner of his room. Jaemin covers his eyes with an arm and thinks about the paperweight. He wonders if time exists within the glass dome of an eternal orange sky.

vi.

Whenever Jaemin tells an adult what it is that he’s going to do after high school, all of them reply more or less with the same response.

“Is it because you’re scared of change?” is what his English teacher asks.

“Is it because of money?” is what his P.E. teacher asks. 

“Is it because you don’t know what to do in life that you plan on staying in this town?” is what his counsellor asks. 

Jaemin doesn’t correct them like he doesn’t correct the viewpoints of people’s misconceptions about him. He lets them think that he’s just a smiling, disillusioned kid who wants to stay because he’s too scared to take a step past the threshold of independence. There is some truth to that, Jaemin supposes, but the reason Jaemin is staying isn’t because of his lack of ambitions or the money or the fear of change. 

It’s much more than that. There is nothing for him to do but wait. Jaemin tries not to look forward but sometimes he does and with all these days ahead of him, he has no clue as to what to fill them with. That’s why, sometimes, he wonders if all he's trying to do is shorten them. 

But it’s a dreary thought. Waiting does that to a person. 

It’s October now. The dead sepia-toned leaves are piling into large heaps by the sidewalks. It’s almost the end of the year. In less than nine months, he’ll be graduating. Their summers of hazy daydreams, adventures through the woodlands, and dishonest basketball matches will come to an end. Jaemin doesn’t know how to feel about that.

When Jaemin looks back at the times where he dipped cookies in milk and chased butterflies underneath the clear sky, he has trouble believing that things had been so simple and carefree. And there are selfish times where he wishes that he hadn’t met Jeno, or Donghyuck, or Renjun or Mark, because maybe then, it wouldn’t hurt at all when they inevitably leave him in the end. This town may be their home but they are not caged nor bound to it by unreachable dreams like Jaemin is. 

They all possess the light. Maybe Jaemin is merely in the process of losing it. 

“ _Hello_ ,” Donghyuck’s singing voice disrupts his reverie. Jaemin blinks. Donghyuck is back from a quick coffee run to the cafe across the street with two cups in his hands, settling down on the seat beside him in the bleachers to the side of the soccer field. Donghyuck hands Jaemin one. “You look like you haven’t slept a single wink. I mean, granted that you always look like that, but still. If you’re tryna go for a dead and vampirish look, I’ma give it to you straight: it does _not_ look good.” 

“Thanks,” Jaemin mumbles. The coffee warms up his cold hands. He lets the steam rise to his face. “And I’ll have you know that I _can_ pull off the vampirish look. Give me red eye contacts and fangs and I’ll be the peak Count Dracula - pretty boy edition. Dark circles are the perfect eyeshadow.”

Donghyuck wrinkles his nose. “God, you’ve been rubbing off on Mark, haven’t you?”

Jaemin laughs and glances down at their outfits. He finds the juxtaposition between him and Donghyuck rather silly; with Donghyuck all bundled up in a thick scarf and a puffy jacket while Jaemin was in a zip-up sweater and a pair of faded jeans. Even in mid-noon it was cold. Jaemin didn’t think much about himself when he was leaving, having been too focused on making to Jisung’s soccer game on time. 

It's just him and Donghyuck, though. Renjun is occupied with supervising the shop and Jeno is busy running errands - not that Jisung is particularly upset about. Rather, earlier he expressed his complete displeasure in having them be present at the match but clearly, both of them didn’t care enough to respect his wishes.

Jaemin glances over at the lid of Donghyuck’s coffee cup. Appalled, he gasps. “You got decaf? I trusted you, Hyuck. You’re supposed to be my favourite!” 

“Shut up, doofus, that’s what you say to _everyone._ ”

“So? The real problem at hand is the fact that you have decaf coffee. Decaf coffee is a fetish of the old and joyless.”

Donghyuck glares at him and stomps on his foot. Jaemin laughs and throws an arm around his shoulder and rests his head against him. Donghyuck is remarkably warm. He takes a sip of his coffee. It’s remarkably bitter.

Parents gather up on the bleachers when the game finally starts. In his periphery, Jaemin can see Donghyuck facepalm whenever Jaemin leaps up and shamelessly cheers at every opportunity given by Jisung handling the ball. After a bit of lighthearted beguilement, however, Jaemin convinces Donghyuck to join him. Jisung, red-faced from both embarrassment and exertion, throws them a glare and a discreet middle finger. Chenle laughs and waves at them. 

Jaemin fondly sighs. “He's growing up to be just like you.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Donghyuck looks beyond offended. “And why are you so obsessed with my brother anyways? He's a fuckin’ twerp.”

“He's _cute_.” Jaemin laughs. He can never put his envy into words. He wishes he had a brother of his own - any sibling at all he can talk to over the empty dinner table. 

At a fifteen minute interval, Jaemin notices Chenle jogging up towards Jisung’s side, his hand curling around his waist. Jisung reciprocates the gesture rather timidly. It lasts for a transient moment, like a mirage that comes and goes in a blurry heat haze, before they’re surrounded by their teammates at the bench. Jaemin blinks. He glances at Donghyuck and finds him occupied with his phone. 

When the match ends with their school’s victory, Jaemin hops off the bleachers. Donghyuck almost trips when his foot gets caught in between the seats. Jaemin glances up at the sky, shafts of sunlight beaming through a soft-spun cloud and kissing outstretched wings that flutter by. 

“I thought I told you guys that you didn’t have to come,” is the first thing that comes out of Jisung’s mouth as he and Chenle approach them. Chenle is smiling and Jaemin wonders if all his bright smiles are as genuine as they seem to be. Jaemin doesn’t believe a boy his age would be able to put on such an extreme extent of optimism no matter how peaceful his upbringing may be. It rubs Jaemin the wrong way and he isn’t sure why.

“Shut up, booger face. You think I wanted to?” Donghyuck scoffs, aggressively messing up Jisung’s hair. “I gotta take a photo of you to show Mom. If she wasn’t out of town, I wouldn’t have even bothered to come. Here, pose or something. You too, Chenle. Get in the picture.” 

Jisung doesn’t need to force a smile when Chenle jabs him in the side with his hand, making Jisung flinch and laugh to which Donghyuck captured on his phone. Jisung retaliates in the same manner and Chenle yelps, skittering away across the field with Jisung in tow. Donghyuck sighs and rummages through his pockets. He takes out a lollipop, unwraps the pink wrapper, and puts it in his mouth before he looks over to Jaemin. “Well, wanna come over? Mark’s coming in a bit after he’s off work to get his ass beat in Mario Kart.”

Jaemin doesn’t need to think it through. Weekends are usually the loneliest. “You bet I’m in.”

 

 

Donghyuck’s sun-spotted cottage is the same as he remembers other than the new garden decorations embellished along the pathway, courtesy of his enthusiastic mother. It's a cute little gnome with bright, pink cheeks. Donghyuck hates it with every fibre of his being. 

When Mark arrives, Chenle immediately clings to him, perching his chin atop his shoulder and smiling contentedly. Mark doesn’t seem too bothered; he merely pats Chenle’s head and accepts the extra set of limbs attached to his body at the current moment. And it’s a little wondrous to see Mark rather comfortable with the prolonged skinship. 

From the very first time Jaemin met Mark, he had been reserved and selective of who touched him with the exception of Donghyuck. But Jaemin has seen the little blooms of growth in how he carries himself; how he holds his head higher now, back straight, and doesn’t shy away from affection offered to him. Though he still squirms at the company of older, middle-aged men, his shoulders look a lot more lighter than before. Jaemin wonders if he’ll ever reach that part in his life too. 

When Chenle detaches himself from Mark to follow Jisung into his room, Jaemin leaps forward and plants a kiss on Mark’s cheek as a surprise attack. He revels in how Mark stumbles back and trips over the table leg in astonishment, sending the crackers Donghyuck had splayed across out of hospitality flying all across the floor. 

“Sorry.” Mark sheepishly smiles. 

Donghyuck crosses his arms at him. “Well, _sorry_ doesn’t sweeten my cup of tea, birdbrain. And stop tryna steal my boyfriend, Nana.”

Mark shoots Jaemin a quick glare as he goes to retrieve the broom. Jaemin grins. 

After a terrifyingly competitive game of Mario Kart that resulted in Mark groveling at the carpeted floor of the living room sulking over his losses, Donghyuck obnoxiously cheering and taunting Mark, and Jaemin eating most of the snacks with no care towards the fact that he was placed last at every race, they settle on lying down on the floor to talk about random ponderings. 

“Have I told you about the little frog my gramps befriended?” At the shake of their heads, Mark continues excitedly. “Well, there’s this frog that comes out every time my gramps waters the plants in our garden and it would croak at him. It only stops if my gramps gives it a tiny shower. He named the frog Peppermint. Turns out to be a she, and she’s pretty cute.” A pause. “Guess I _frog_ ot to tell you guys until now.” 

Mark bursts into giggles and slaps at the floor. Jaemin watches on in amusement while Donghyuck stares at him in disgust. “Mark, that was terrible.”

Mark catches his breath, sighing into Donghyuck’s shoulder. “I make a lot of unfunny jokes. So I’ve been _toad._ ”

“ _O_ -kay,” Donghyuck exclaims over Mark’s fitful of laughter. “I didn’t win Mario Kart for this torturous allotment of humorless puns. Let’s move on from the frog jokes, shall we?” 

“I’ve got something. No seriously, I’ll stop with the jokes you party pooper. How's Jeno? I mean, other than going to school with him and all. I haven’t seen him around for a while.” Mark asks thoughtfully. “I kinda miss him even though he sneezed in my face all the time. He cheated a lot in basketball and I liked seeing Hyuck get mad over that since he’s such a sore loser.”

Jaemin finds it funny how the both of them don’t act like a normal couple at all when Donghyuck smacks Mark on the arm. They either range from acting like an old married couple to a pair of juvenile children who stole each other’s candy. “Eat shit, turd licker.”

“Right back at you, pea brain.”

Ignoring their quarreling, Jaemin drapes himself dramatically over their legs and sighs. “You didn’t hear this from me but I miss his stupid face too.” He starts to list things off his fingers. “He's been a busy bee, I'm the third wheel whenever I'm with just the two of you, Jisungie avoids his brother in school like the plague which includes avoiding _me_ too, and my teenage angst is compiling into a big, heaping mess of a premature existential crisis because of my future - what a stinkin’ time to be alive! I have no one to bug _and_ hug. I feel like that one Robert Frost poem.”

Mark laughs with his whole body at the vague literary reference but it merely flies over Donghyuck’s head. Instead, Donghyuck pushes Jaemin off of them and sits up, a thoughtful frown on his face. “What about Renjun?”

Jaemin blinks. His playful disposition slowly dwindles away into a quiet contemplation and he rests his head on his folded arm, looking at the floral wallpaper. He tries to uphold his light tone through a smile, “He’s got bigger priorities, but that’s Renjun for you.”

Jaemin supposes he fails to keep his facade right, because Donghyuck casts a doubtful look to his way. “Have you talked to him lately?”

Other than the late night phone call a few nights ago, Jaemin hasn’t. Though Renjun has already recovered from his cold and Jaemin sees him at school at times since they don’t share any classes together this year, his legs automatically take him down the opposite side of the hall if he were to spot a familiar head of black hair and recognize the peculiar alien stickers on his backpack. Jaemin hides underneath the bleachers of the gymnasium during lunch break, ignoring the messages he’s being sent, and pointedly avoids the topic whenever Jeno tries to bring it up in their History class. 

Jaemin doesn’t know if he’s being too obvious about avoiding Renjun. Maybe he is. He’s always been all about the subtleties - all about simplicity and looking untroubled, but he’s finding it hard to keep it on the down low when it comes to the wistfulness sitting on top of his chest that continues to prod at the open wound in his heart. 

He doesn’t like the feeling. And he doesn’t like the feeling Renjun makes him feel either. It was too warm; too valuable for him to cradle in his hands, for fear it would escape through the gaps between his fingers like melted gold. All ephemeral things do. 

And it is after that late night phone call with Renjun that Jaemin realizes that people are not permanent no matter how close knit they are. People are just as fleeting as a star at daybreak. 

“No.” Jaemin says. “I don’t want to bother him.”

Mark is sitting up now too. He shares a glance with Donghyuck. “You know, I didn’t know you two were really that close until Renjun told me about your sleepovers. I think Renjun always makes time for you, don’t you think?”

“I rather he not,” Jaemin tersely replies. Agitated by the sudden shift in the conversation and the mention of their sleepovers, he bites the inside of his cheek and gets up from the floor. He doesn’t want to hear what comes after. He already knows.“I should go home before it gets too late. Thanks for inviting me over. I’ll see you guys later.” 

He doesn’t wait for Donghyuck to walk him out. He grabs his things and rushes down the hall. At the doorway past the kitchen, he slips into his threadbare sneakers and leaves the cottage, heading past the tressils of budded plants and the garden overflowing with autumnal flowers that were beginning to wither at the slow arrival of winter. 

Unlike Mark who unwarily wears his heart on his sleeve, Jaemin isn’t supposed to be see-through because _he_ is the one who is supposed to be seeing. After all, Jaemin is the one who saw Mark falter in the name of his heart’s pursuit. Jaemin is the one who saw Donghyuck laden with transient trepidation at the prospect of an unrequited love. Jaemin is the one who sees everything in between the space of nothing. No one is supposed to see Jaemin and tell him what it is that he’s been trying to evade for the longest time. 

He stops in the middle of the uneven road, surrounded by pampas grass and tall fields of wheat. _A trick of the eye_ , is what he thinks, when he sees the same ghost in his kitchen linger before him in the distance, facing the direction of where the sun sets; the same blurry faced ghost that Jaemin and his father still waits for. 

Jaemin covers his eyes with his palms. He runs all the way home. He needs sleep.

vii.

Jaemin doesn’t consider himself as someone who is withdrawn. He knows how to please and how to escape unwanted propositions without disappointing if he pokes and prods underneath the surface enough with a charming smile, just like how he succeeded in avoiding the relentless offers given to him to join the cross-country team when the coach had surveyed how fast he’s capable of running. But he supposes the downfall about his inclination for gaining approval from anyone and everyone is that he can’t say no.

People will leave if he says no. Jaemin doesn’t know any other way to make them stay. 

There was a time he stretched himself far too thin that he hadn’t been able to get out of bed for school, but he was able to pull himself out of his exhaustion in time to help Jeno plan a rubric for the indoor track meet for the eighth graders at the end of the school day. However, with a single glance over at Jaemin’s pathetic state, Jeno whacked the back of his head and gently urged him to go back home and rest. Jaemin went straight to Renjun’s shophouse instead.

Renjun seated him at their dinner table in the dining room behind the partition, handing him a cup of  
jasmine tea. Renjun looked unhappy. “You’re going to get taken advantage of.” 

“Not by you,” Jaemin said.

They didn’t speak much after that.

Jaemin knows that most of his peers consider him a people pleaser. A suck-up. A kiss-ass. A phony, even, when his haphazard coquetry adds a shallow credential to his name. In a small town where everyone is connected, the rumors spread. But Jaemin lets the misconception broil in the background because at the end of the day, those that think ill of him will always approach him with a certain wish nonetheless. It’s funny yet kind of sad, even, because Jaemin will always say yes, and they will always stay because of that. 

But Renjun isn’t staying; he’s leaving to pursue the mysteries of the outer world. Mark and Donghyuck aren’t staying either because they’ll be travelling to recollect the lost pieces of their childhoods after Donghyuck graduates, and Jeno will search the world through tunnel vision to chase his dreams with quiet devotion. Jaemin will be left behind again, playing with ghosts and longing for the touch of that warm hand.

And when he's able to look at himself in the mirror, he doesn't really recognize himself anymore. He's become such a strange shape from trying to fit in. 

And it is the violent stab of loneliness that propels him to search for another soul that’ll stay. 

Jaemin says yes to making notes for the girl who rarely shows up to his Physics class, to building a timeline of famous classical authors for his English teacher, to volunteering at a school fundraiser for the athletic clubs, to helping out with the theatre crew with the tech equipment - anything and everything that will make him gain approval and credibility and worth staying for. He pushes himself into the arms of his classmates who act like shadow puppets with hollowed out smiles, looking as though they came straight out of a Neil Gaiman gothic novel. They don’t really care about him. They care about what he’s willing to do. 

Jaemin drags himself around and pretends that he’s not tired when all he wants is to go back to bed. But he can’t sleep either way. He would end up staring up at the ceiling in hopes that the peak of his exhaustion would finally knock him out. 

His crash and burn doesn’t go unnoticed. Renjun ends up finding him passed out in his usual spot underneath the bleachers, courtesy of Jisung snitching on him. Jaemin doesn’t have the energy and heart in him to be mad, though. 

“You’re an idiot.” Renjun glowers. “What were you thinking?”

“I’m thinking that I should probably go find a new hiding place,” Jaemin jokes. It backfires, of course, when he sees Renjun’s clenched fists. 

“Is that all you have to say when you’ve been avoiding me and everyone else for the past two weeks?” Renjun crouches down, arms propped up over his knees. “Either I mysteriously pissed you off or you suddenly think you’re too good for us, or you’re being a complete asshole just for the fun of it. I’m starting to think it’s all of the above.” 

Jaemin doesn’t really know what to say to that. All he can afford to do in his tired state is feebly laugh. “Ouch.” 

Renjun inhales sharply, running a hand over his face. Jaemin can tell he’s trying to keep his temper at bay and guilt washes over him. Jaemin isn’t supposed to be the cause of that. He’s supposed to be simple, happy - someone easy to deal with and not to worry about. It’s clear that he’s been a disappointment and it feels like a cement block had just dropped and crushed his heart into splinters. 

“Renjun, I’m - “

“Come sleep over,” Renjun interrupts him. He’s looking at Jaemin straight in the eye now, composed. Unreadable. Any trace of frustration from before has now quelled into a faint brimming in the wells of his eyes. “My mom’s been making pots of red date longan tea because she’s been expecting you to come over any time now. If I have to drink another bowl of it for the fifth time this week, I’m going to go crazy.”

Jaemin tenses. Renjun knows that with his dad’s irregular work hours, his dad doesn’t pay much attention to whether or not Jaemin is actually home. But still. He doesn’t know how Renjun can still invite him over when he’s clearly still irritated. “I have to be at school by seven tomorrow to help out with the theatre posters.”

“So? Cancel it. It’s not like you’re actually friends with them anyways. They’re all just insignificant leeches mooching off of your kindness.” Renjun shrugs, standing up from his crouch. 

Jaemin manages a weak chuckle. “That’s a little harsh.”

“Well, honesty is better than sugar-coated bullshit.” Renjun says, looking at Jaemin in a way as though his eyes were communicating something else. “And being honest in itself is easy. People just make it difficult.”

Jaemin looks up at the shadow that falls dimly across the curves of his face from the contrast of the ceiling lights shining against the back of his head. Renjun’s integrity has always been something worth striving to emulate. Jaemin can’t do that in fear the truth will make others leave him. But Renjun, frank in his disposition, will always be the kind of quiet candid light in the sky, like the north star, guiding him back home from his wayward path.

“Okay,” Jaemin finally yields. 

Renjun doesn’t wait for him as he turns and makes his way across the gymnasium for the doors. Jaemin stumbles after him with his backpack, dusting off his jacket and pants. Jaemin makes sure to remember to leave a thank-you note in the maintenance staff’s office. The janitor always keeps the space underneath the bleachers clean just for him. 

As they’re leaving the school grounds and heading to the bus stop, Jaemin tugs at Renjun’s sleeve, catching his attention. Renjun patiently waits. Jaemin lets go and looks down at the ground, folding in his lips.

“I’m sorry."

Renjun is quiet. He huffs and pinches Jaemin's nose, making him yelp. "Don't be silly. If anything, I'm sorry. I know you're not any of those things I assumed you to be. But you _were_ being a dick. Don't do it again."

Jaemin smiles. "Your wish is my command." He chuckles when Renjun rolls his eyes. "On the contrary, _I’m_ the one who thinks that all of you are too good for me, you know.”

“You’re being an idiot again.” Renjun shakes his head. “Why would you think that?” 

Jaemin shrugs, smiling. “Well. You know me.”

Renjun doesn’t respond. He stares at Jaemin with the same, deep gaze that unnerved him the first time Jaemin met him. One thing Jaemin succeeded in discovering from past observances is that Renjun’s stare isn't always intentionally cold; his face merely lacks the mobility others had to present a visceral warmth. But still. Jaemin feels as though he’s being picked apart in a vivisection underneath such intense scrutiny. 

“Yeah,” Renjun mumbles. His eyes flicker ahead. “I guess so.” 

There’s a note of uncertainty in his words that Jaemin chooses to ignore. Jaemin hooks their arms together, half-expecting Renjun to push him away, but he doesn’t. Jaemin wonders if maybe in that other dimension of an eternal orange sky, Jaemin would be able to read Renjun’s inaccessible mind.

viii.

Ms. Huang immediately takes Jaemin by the shoulders and turns him around once they arrive at the shophouse. She inspects him from head to toe, leers at his complexion, and studies his eyebags closely before she shoos him away into the back of the partition, chastising him about his lack of regard for his health all in good nature. She tells Renjun to heat up the tea to which he begrudgingly complies.

Jaemin finds Ms. Huang’s character interesting. Renjun mentioned once during their late night talks how his mother was austere at best and his father a passive man who was devoid of emotion unless provoked - the typical parentage of a cyclical strict upbringing. But Renjun’s parents had mellowed out throughout the years after Renjun’s older sister finally married and moved out to Guangzhou to live with her husband. 

Jaemin can see a resemblance between Renjun and his mother; he’s taken after her blunt way of taking care of people. With the same protectiveness, it isn’t so far-fetched that Ms. Huang is willing to welcome him to her home with open arms and various herbal remedies for his sleeping ailment. 

“I think she likes you better than her own son,” Renjun grumbles as he brings the bowl of tea and a plate of tea eggs to the dinner table. Ms. Huang has disappeared back into the front of the shophouse. “She never makes _me_ any of this when I’m ill. Just tells me to suck it up and dress warmer.” 

Jaemin snickers. “It’s my irresistible charm.” 

“The only charm you have is the charm to piss off and confuse a bunch of people in less than forty-eight hours,” Renjun deadpans, taking one of the eggs. He begins to peel off the shell and once he’s done, he places the egg back onto the plate and nudges it towards Jaemin’s side of the table. 

There is a quiet warmth that blooms in his chest akin to the feeling of flowers weaving through his ribcage, fluttering in its stark emptiness, from the tiny gesture. And when he puts the entire egg in his mouth and tries to speak with it, Renjun laughs at his silliness. Jaemin is sure that the sun somehow toppled down from the sky and made a home in the sound of his laughter. Jaemin smiles; how ironic it is that he feels the most alive when his heart skips a beat. 

Jaemin likes spending the night at Renjun’s place, but he can’t lie about how bitter longing fills his heart every time he comes over. Come dinner time, Jaemin would immerse himself into the conversation as much as he could; Ms. Huang would pile fish and steamed vegetables onto his bowl of rice whenever he was too busy talking to even eat, and Renjun was the heart of all debates about cosmology that even had his father contributing to the discussion. The warmth and heartiness despite the Huang’s gravitas was something Jaemin, deep down, yearned for himself. 

Jaemin doesn’t recognize the familiarity of having a full table. He eats alone. He eats with ghosts.

Ms. Huang cuts apples for them to eat afterwards. Jaemin insists on helping with the dishes but the mother-son duo kicks him out of the kitchen when Renjun nearly incapacitates him by aggressively swinging a wooden spoon at his way. That’s how he finds himself sitting at the couch beside Mr. Huang who was watching a historical drama on the small television. 

“So,” Mr. Huang initiates the conversation first. “Any plans after high school, Jaemin?”

He’s been hearing that question and variations of said question way too much lately. “Uh - nothing yet, really.”

Mr. Huang is unfazed. “Well. Whatever you decide to do, make sure it makes you happy.”

Jaemin nods, grateful for such a simple answer. Mr. Huang is also a quiet man who doesn’t talk a lot, but when he does, it’s almost always a life lesson condensed into ten seconds. Jaemin finds it nice since he’s not preachy about it. Though somewhat detached, at least he isn’t an absent figure in the household. 

Later on in the evening, Renjun hands him a change of clothes - the clothes, Jaemin realizes, that he had forgotten to bring with him from the last sleepover. It was washed and smelled of cherry blossoms. All his necessities were kept as though he lived here and Jaemin smiles at the sentiment. 

After he showers, he finds Renjun setting up the futon in his room beside his bed, crowding the futon with pillows to mimic a makeshift fort. Though Ms. Huang admonished them to sleep early before she retired to bed with her husband, Jaemin ends up watching the vine compilations on his phone that Donghyuck had spammed him at twelve in the morning with Renjun still up at his desk, finishing up his last minute homework. 

“How the hell is Shakespeare gonna help me with astronomy?” Renjun gripes, furiously scribbling down answers to a close-reading worksheet. “The dude can’t even simplify his own idioms and metaphors. I would rather read the entirety of the Shapley–Curtis Debate than some goth dude languishing over his mother. What a jackass.”

Jaemin grimaces. “If Mark heard that, his feelings would be hurt.”

“Well, Mark - “ Renjun picks up the book, squinting at a certain line as he recites it, “ _is pigeon-liver’d and lacks gall._ ”

“Oh my God.” Jaemin cackles into his pillow and pulls up his chat with Mark. “I’m so gonna tell him you just insulted him through one of his favourite plays.” 

Renjun picks up his stress ball and throws it at his chest. 

 

 

Jaemin has the tendency to go out for a run to exhaust himself to the point of collapsion when he can’t sleep. It’s a grueling (and maybe unhealthy) fixation of his but it does help him get a few hours of shut-eye no matter how restless of a sleep it is, and that is what his legs are itching to do right now.

The ache of his limbs and the sting of his eyes has him cascading between the brink of consciousness, but he jolts out of his drowsy stupor out of instinct and forgets that he’s not at his own home - that he doesn’t need to feel the urge to stay alert for the sound of the door opening out of an irrational fear. He is already tired, having ran on autopilot from stretching himself too thin the past few days for the appeasement of others, but all Jaemin can do at one in the morning is watch the dim afterglow of the moonlight leak through the wooden shutters of the arched windows. 

His gaze shifts. He stares at the opposite wall until he can see speckles of faint colour in the darkness. He’s looked at walls for so long that Jaemin’s beginning to think that it’s become a part of his heart. Even his identity. Maybe it’s an accurate depiction of him. A little empty, a little dull, and entirely static. 

He glances up at Renjun cocooned in his blanket. Without thinking, Jaemin whispers, “Renjun.” 

He’s greeted with silence. Jaemin thinks about that run until Renjun unexpectedly croaks out a flat answer, “What.”

“You’re still awake?”

Renjun turns around and sits up, his messy hair sticking up in funny angles. “Hard not to be when you keep on twisting and turning. Blankets can be loud. You _know_ I’m a light sleeper, Jaemin.” 

Jaemin sheepishly grins. “Sorry.” 

Renjun huffs. Jaemin can tell even in the darkness that he’s rolling his eyes. He watches as Renjun reaches for something to his side. 

“I’m out of candles, so this will have to do.” Renjun picks up his night lamp in the shape of a pretty moon and turns it on, illuminating the room in a bright, molten gold, replacing the dull shadows of the walls with the soft glow. He places the lamp back onto his night stand and settles back into bed. Then he sits up again as though an afterthought had crept up on him. He catches Jaemin’s blank stare and reluctantly scoots to the side, patting the empty space beside him. 

Jaemin beams and rolls out of his futon, hugging a pillow to his chest as he pads to Renjun’s bed and climbs in beside him. He throws his arm over Renjun, only to have his arm shoved away, and Jaemin airily laughs. 

The moon lamp is bright with immensity in the corner of his eye. Jaemin looks up at the ceiling, admiring how it appears to be the reminiscent of a rustic dawn. He can feel the warmth of the light dig deep into his bones and curl around his chest. Or maybe it’s because Renjun’s warm body is next to him. Renjun is too nice. 

“Hey, Renjun,” Jaemin says. “I’m sorry.” 

Renjun reaches forward and flicks his forehead, startling him. “I’m going to kick you off this bed if you apologize one more time.”

“But - “

“Take care of yourself before you worry about others, Jaemin.” Renjun pulls the blanket tightly over them, snuggling into it more comfortably. “That’s how you can make it up to me.” 

Jaemin falls silent. He gnaws at his bottom lip in thought. He can’t say no to that either. Not because of his pleasing streak, but because perhaps there’s an underlying truth to Renjun’s words that cannot be denied even in the absence of his consciousness. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll try.” 

“Good.” Renjun nods and lightly claps his hands. “Now, considering the neither of us are sleeping any time soon, let me tell you about the rare discovery an international team of astronomers recently made about a possible twin of the sun.” 

He launches off into an eager explanation about it, how the team of astronomers had found a star that was likely born in the same stellar nursery as the sun. The sun had once been part of a tight neighborhood that was torn by the forces of the Milky Way, thus all the stars had separated and scattered across the galaxy. The star they’d found possessed uncannily similar properties of the sun, and with such a discovery, it could help researchers find out more about the ancient star cluster and the sun’s history. 

Jaemin can hear the faint quiver in his voice as though he was trying to reduce the level of enthusiasm in his voice. Jaemin wishes Renjun didn’t feel the need to. He has the brightest thoughts, the brightest interests. Kind of like a star in itself. 

He starts to think about how they were all probably stars: his friends, Satara and the other old ladies at the thrift store, the nice staff at the bakery, his father. But Jaemin doesn’t think of himself as a star. He feels more like Pluto - left forgotten in the borders of the Kuiper belt. And like Pluto, he is no stranger to rejection. But he pushes himself to be a part of them anyways even if they are worlds of happiness apart.

“Sorry, am I boring you?” Renjun stops his rambling when he notices how Jaemin stopped nodding his head along. “Wait. Am I making you sleepy? I don’t know if I should be annoyed or happy at that kind of revelation. Should I keep on going?” 

Jaemin quickly shakes his head. “No, no no. You’re not. I like hearing you talk about the things you like. It’s cute.”

Renjun makes a disgruntled sound. He tucks his arm underneath the side of his head as he turns on his side and faces Jaemin. In the warm glow of the moon lap, Jaemin can see the enigma through his eyes like telescopes searching for the stars. Jaemin can never seem to hold his gaze no matter how hard he tries. There always seem to be a frail thread between their eye contact that can be snapped with a mere, single blink. 

“So, what about you?” Renjun asks. “What’s inhabiting your mind at - “ he squints at the clock on his nightstand over Jaemin’s head, “one-thirty in the morning?” 

Jaemin smiles. “What do you want to do but can’t?” 

“Is this a trick question?”

“As if I have the brains for that, Renjun.” 

Renjun snorts. He’s quietly contemplating for a moment before he speaks up again, “I want to visit my sister. I want to talk to her. We haven’t talked since the wedding. Time just slips through your fingers, you know? My parents and I don’t have the time to visit her and she’s never been one for small talk over the phone. But I think it’s also because I don’t really have the courage to, really, when I know she doesn't have a good relationship with my mom like I do.”

“Do you think she hates you because of that?”

“Hate is a pretty strong word.” Renjun shrugs. “I would just say she doesn’t have very fond memories in this house. That's all."

Jaemin hums in thought, a wistful smile on his face. "I think she'll appreciate it, Renjun. If I was in her shoes, I'd appreciate it. I think everyone likes to know that they're not forgotten."

Renjun seems to consider the weight of his words. He murmurs, “I guess you’re right.” His mouth lifts into a tiny smile. "Thanks." Jaemin has never seen him look so fond before. He doesn't know if the look is for him. He pretends that it isn't. 

"What about you?" Renjun asks. "What’s something you want to do but can’t?” 

Jaemin has thought about it often during his empty nights. He would see the fuzzy memory carved into silhouettes on the walls and watch everything he can remember unfurl before him: the windburn, the faint laughter he can still hear when he’s dizzy on caffeine, the ghost. 

“Skate,” Jaemin simply says. 

Renjun blinks, slightly confused. “Other than the fact that the town doesn’t have an ice rink, the lakes rarely freeze over, and the nearest rink would be, like - four hours away, why not if you want to skate that badly?”

“Transportation isn’t a problem.” Jaemin laughs silently to himself. He turns on his side as well so he can face Renjun, but averts his gaze to the wall behind him. “I’d just - like to skate again. It would be nice. I miss it.” 

“Why can’t you?” 

Jaemin swallows. He doesn’t know if he’s beginning to regret bringing up the topic or not because he’s never thought about trying to hide the truth somewhere in the gaps of his words. He’s said it multiple times in his head already. Saying it out loud is unfathomable. “I’m waiting for someone. They promised they would come back and take me there again.”

Renjun is staring at him. Jaemin tries to stare back but his gaze ends up wandering to the side again. And what he doesn’t expect is for Renjun to ask him, “Is that why you want to stay?” 

He tries to laugh but it comes out wrong. “Staying is the only thing there is for me to be good at.” 

“No,” Renjun murmurs. “I don’t really think it is.” 

Jaemin doesn’t know what to say to that either. He hates how Renjun can unnerve him with a single sentence, a single stare, when Jaemin is supposed to be wounded tight into an intangible figure that floats in between the backdrop. He doesn’t have the heart to explain what it is that keeps him fixed in this static town. Jaemin fears that, once he puts it into words, the pathetic illusive hope he’s been holding onto for so long will disperse as though it never existed - as though years of clinging onto it has meant nothing. 

He shuts his eyes. The gravity of Renjun’s words renders his brain empty of any comical replies that can lighten up the mood he had unintentionally brought down. So, Jaemin shrugs and reaches over to turn off the moon lamp, extinguishing the warm glow. He rolls out of Renjun’s bed and settles back into the futon. He stares at the walls and tries not to let his voice tremble, “Goodnight, Renjun.” 

A beat of silence. Then, “Yeah. Goodnight, Jaemin.” 

Jaemin doesn't sleep until the sun starts to rise.


	2. aeterna

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> jaemin comes face to face to reality.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wrote this instead of studying for my finals!! woohoo!! and i also did not think it'd be this long i am so sorry,,,, but i believe the last chapter will be shorter c: all in all, thank u guys for reading this. it means a lot! <3

The past is like a safe-deposit box. 

No matter how much you change your appearance, your personality, your outlook - nothing will change what is inside of it when you decide to open it up again. It will forever steep in its own darkness, its own ambiguity, left unresolved because no one is born knowing how to truly forget.

When Jaemin peeks inside the box sometimes, he finds himself wanting to remember more but he can’t. He dredges up certain memories that fill up the space in his mind and he is scared that there will be no more room left in the safe-deposit box for newer memories to live in. Jaemin doesn’t want to forget the summers filled with tinkling laughter and the warmth of fingers threading through his hair when he’s lying on somebody’s lap. He is scared of everything becoming an afterthought because when everyone leaves, the memories he has of them will be the only thing left. 

And when his memory fails, the warmth will fade and he will have nothing.

i.

Renjun stands on his tiptoes as he searches for the bus in the distance. He’s wrapped up in a twill coat and a wool scarf, the bangs of his hair falling gently over the lids of his eyes, making him look softer than usual. He grumbles something incoherent to himself - most likely complaining about the long wait. But Jaemin doesn’t find it long. He likes the slow morning and the singing of the blackbirds and the crisp air that stings his eyes but keeps him awake.

A shrill sound of a notification rings from his phone and Jaemin looks down. He has received understanding replies as a result of cancelling his overbearing plans for the morning on behalf of Renjun’s persistence, making sure to have had let the theatre members down as gentle as possible, but he isn’t sure if it was because of his mastery in overanalysis that he detects a hint of passive aggressiveness from the screen. 

But he supposes that smiling at everyone in perpetual bright spirits and being willing to take on favors without so much of a complaint has become an universal expectation from his character.

“How’d they take it?” asks Renjun. 

Jaemin pockets his phone and smiles. “Like total champs.”

“Oh, come on. It’s just poster making. Paint a fucking stripe as a decoration and call it a day, already. Why do they need you to help them with such a simple task, anyways?”

 _To do all the work_ , is what Jaemin doesn’t say. Instead, he shrugs, scuffing the sole of his shoe against the asphalt when he kicks at a stray pebble. He watches it skitter across the road, a few inches from falling into the gaps of the sewer drain. A strong gust of wind rushes past them and it sends shivers down his spine. He slips his hands into the sleeves of his sweater and jogs on the spot to maintain some semblance of warmth. “It keeps me busy.” 

Renjun presses his lips down in disapproval. He shakes his head after a second of contemplating, as though he’s thought twice of scolding Jaemin again for his tendency to gratify others to the extent of overworking himself. But Renjun knows him more than he lets on; he knows not to push, just like how he’d known this morning not to mention the abrupt ending to their conversation before bed and how his red-rimmed eyes looked emptier than usual. 

Jaemin isn’t sure how he feels about that - to be known by someone who will have nothing to do with him in less than nine months. 

After another ten minutes of waiting and teeth chattering, Jaemin finally notices the bus coming into sight. Delighted, Jaemin turns to Renjun with the intent to tease him about his lack of patience when, all of a sudden, complete grey encompasses his view for a fleeting moment. Something soft brushes minutely across his face before it drapes over his shoulders. In a blink of an eye, the grey disappears and Renjun is standing close to him, wrapping the wool scarf around Jaemin’s neck and tugging at the ends to even them out. 

Jaemin stares at him. If he were to take one step closer, the tips of their shoes would touch and their faces would come into closer proximity. He would feel Renjun’s breath against his cheek, tickling his skin in the same manner his voice does through the phone, but Jaemin finds himself unable to move. His feet is rooted in spot. His lips part but no words come out; only a white filigree snakes into the air and disperses back into nonexistence. The warmth between them lingers and envelops him from head to toe, shielding him against the autumnal cold. 

Renjun steps back, awkwardly shifting from one foot to another. “You’re a moron for wearing so little. Have a bit of self-preservation, will you?” 

Jaemin gently touches the scarf. Embers flicker to life in his heart before it begins to burn like a bright wildfire. “But you’ll be cold.”

“I’m wearing three layers. I have a _turtleneck_. Don’t worry about it, alright?” 

“I’ll wash it first and give it back tomorrow.”

Renjun purses his lips. He slants his gaze to the side. “No. I gave it to you to keep, so keep it.” 

Jaemin doesn’t have a chance to reply when the bus arrives at their stop. Renjun briskly walks past him with his bus pass in hand and Jaemin trails after him, still in a daze of stupefaction. 

The bus is quiet and empty. Luckily enough, they find seats in the back. Renjun sits near the window and Jaemin takes the seat beside him. He recovers from his astonishment in time to realize that Renjun is pointedly ignoring him by staring out the window. His tense shoulders are hiked up in anticipation as though he’s bracing himself for a comment about his sudden show of intimacy. 

At least, that’s what Jaemin surmises it to be. Renjun has always been an inelegant conveyor of affection. He likes the efficiency of words more than the weight of actions. That’s what makes him particularly hard to read when he does things that are so out of the blue, because behind that veneer of stoicism is a tender heart that Jaemin will never see again once their paths diverge. But the fire in his heart makes him feel less dull and less like a clump of flesh without a soul and Renjun, only Renjun, can bring him back down to the earth as a living being and less like a ghost.

Jaemin smiles into the scarf. It smells like his favourite fabric softener and the scented sachet of cherry blossoms Renjun always hangs in his closet. And it’s warm - infinitely warm, as though the vestige of a glowing star was left behind in his care. He hides his face deeper into the scarf and closes his eyes, trying not to think about how the fabric has touched Renjun’s lips. 

It all feels like a countdown and Jaemin wonders if the warmth he feels around Renjun will leave once Renjun leaves too. But Jaemin hopes that the warmth never ends, that their youth of fleecy clouds and wool scarves and unspoken fondness will stay.

ii.

He meets up with Jeno at his locker finally after two weeks of somewhat avoiding him. Jaemin apologizes as soon as he finds him searching through the heaping mess of his locker but Jeno merely squishes his cheeks, looks him in the eye and declares, “You’re an idiot sandwich. But that’s okay.”

His instant clemency makes Jaemin feel slightly more worse than relieved; he had expected at least a haze of anger that would inevitably spring from being left in the dark, but Jeno has always taken Jaemin’s mercurial moods in stride and understands enough to not intrude. The last thing Jaemin wants is to be an impediment in his life; he only hopes that his appreciation for him and their friendship is conveyed enough so that it doesn’t appear and feel one-sided. Jaemin cherishes him and cherishes the others who have become like family, like another part of him, even though they will take those parts away with them when they leave town. 

As they head to history class, Jeno’s gaze flickers down to the wool scarf wrapped around his neck for a split second before he does a double-take and nearly trips over his own two feet. Jaemin steadies him by the elbow, wondering if Jeno has been unfortunate enough to have picked up on Mark’s clumsiness by some form of osmosis. 

“Hey.” Jeno squints. “Is that Renjun’s scarf?”

Jaemin coughs. The fact that Jeno immediately recognized the scarf as Renjun’s renders him flustered and a little bit exposed. “Maybe?” 

“Oh, it definitely is.” Jeno picks up one of the ends and shows Jaemin the initials _RJ_ scribbled across the tag. “See? He’s been writing his name on his shit for years because he’s fussy and doesn’t like people touching his stuff. I’m surprised he let you wear it. He doesn’t even let me borrow a pencil. This is blatant favouritism.” 

Jaemin is startled into a laugh, all the while ignoring the flutter in his chest. He doesn’t know what to do with that kind of information and he doesn’t know if he wants to know why Jaemin is the exception to that foible of Renjun’s. “Is that so? It’s - probably nothing special. It was just cold.”

“If you say so.” Jeno raises a brow dubiously and shrugs. He throws an arm around Jaemin and smiles at him in the same, familiar manner one would smile when they know something the other doesn’t. “I think Renjun’s just got a soft spot for warm things.” 

“What? What does that mean?” Jaemin blinks, a barrage of questions tumbling around in his mind that is left unanswered. Jeno doesn’t elaborate and merely nods to himself in a sage manner with a patronizing pat on Jaemin’s head. Jaemin shoves at his shoulder and Jeno laughs, rushing ahead whilst leaving Jaemin to steep in his own confusion. 

 

 

Throughout the day, Jaemin tries not to focus on the dirty looks he garners from his classmates, namely those part of the club he cancelled his plans with earlier, and tries not to think about how - no matter what he does, no matter how much he pours his heart out into the world - the world will not do the same for him. But Jaemin isn’t disappointed; he’s always known that since the beginning. He just has the tendency to hold onto stubborn hope.

Jaemin leaves a thank-you note in the maintenance office at the end of his free block and heads to their usual lunch place, which is Donghyuck’s locker. He sees them on a rare occasion where all of them don’t have club meetings. As he’s approaching his locker located at the end of the corridor, Jaemin notices Donghyuck vehemently rambling with wild gesticulation. Once Jaemin nears the vicinity enough to be able to hear, he makes out a string of colourful expletives that even the most crudest of people would wince at. 

“And now I have three weeks worth of detention because I told him that he would be reincarnated as toilet paper in his next life from talking so much shit. And because I tripped him and he crashed headfirst into an open locker. Mr. Lee saw everything and dragged my ass to the principal’s office. Like, what is this? Elementary school? I can’t even knock some guy out because he was being a prejudiced, narrow-minded asshole? What a bunch of pricks.” Donghyuck dramatically drapes himself over Jaemin’s lap after he settles down on the floor beside him. Donghyuck glances up at him with a dreary expression. Jaemin takes the skinship as a sign of forgiveness.

“Hey, Hyuck,” Jaemin beams, ruffling his hair. “Nice to hear that our local high school vigilante strikes again!” 

“Don’t call him that,” Renjun complains. 

“Think you can punch Saiya in my geography class too?” Jeno speaks up with a mouthful of noodles. “If I have to listen to him talk about how he thinks the earth is flat, I swear to God I’m going to throw myself out the fucking window from the third floor.”

“This isn’t Jerry Springer, you dimwits. You’re going to get suspended.” Renjun smacks Jeno on the arm for his immoral suggestion. “Make it until graduation before you pull some dumb shit.” 

Donghyuck groans, burying his face into the fabric of Jaemin’s sweater. “This is all torturous, I tell you. I can’t wait to get the fuck out of this town.” 

Something heavy settles over his chest, heavy like a spade that digs into clay. The scarf around his neck pulls him down. Jaemin hears Jeno chime in agreement but he can see in his periphery that Renjun is staring at him. Jaemin doesn’t know what to say. Maybe he shouldn’t say anything at all. 

“Hyuck, look,” Renjun says a little too loudly as he picks up a celery stick from his plasticware. “I found your dignity - thin and easily breakable.”

Donghyuck springs up from Jaemin’s lap and squawks out of indignation. Jeno laughs at their squabbling and Jaemin sits there, watching them with a smile on his face, wondering if it is possible to miss them when they’re merely inches away from him but a breadth of dreams apart. 

 

 

 

At the thrift store, Satara glances at him in faint surprise as he places the paperweight down on the counter along with a package of embroidery floss. She has a hibiscus patterned scarf around her neck today and her golden nose stud glistens beneath the bright ceiling lights. Jaemin recalls that she was wearing a ladybug-patterned scarf the first day he met her. Jaemin doesn’t know why it is the trivial details that he ends up remembering. 

“I had my suspicions you would buy it.” Satara smiles as she punches in the price. As Jaemin pulls out his lunch money and hands it over, she counts the change and adds, “Not many people use paperweights, nowadays, but it doesn’t have to be useful. My husband collected them for the sake of collecting. He found beauty in the process of preserving a novelty that would become rare in the future. Perhaps it would be a nice holiday gift for an old soul, don’t you think?”

She drops the change into the center of his palm. He shoves the embroidery floss into his backpack before he picks up the paperweight after declining the newspaper wrapping. “Yeah,” he answers belatedly. “For an old soul.” 

 

 

In the evening, Jaemin decides to pass by the bakery before it closes in fifteen minutes. One of the staff members by the name of Yuta is already holding the box of egg tarts, ready to give. Jaemin smiles and drops the change he received from the paperweight into the tips jar by the till.

There’s four. He eats two of them on the way home, and once he arrives at his unit, he tapes a note onto the closed lid of the box: _The bakery gave me egg tarts again. They’re really good._ He leaves it in the fridge. 

He stays up late that night. He sits at his desk and takes out the colourful assortment of embroidery floss and cuts them at the length from between his fingertips to his shoulder. When his eyes begin to burn from squinting at all the small knots he was making while alternating between the coloured floss, Jaemin finally heads to bed at three in the morning.

But Jaemin doesn’t sleep. He stares at Renjun’s folded scarf on the top of his dresser instead. He wonders if it’ll still be warm if he wears it tomorrow. His gaze shifts to the paperweight on his night stand and how, with its transparent tangibility, it constituted another world - another dimension that suspended time and place and emotion in the heart of the crystal.

Jaemin wonders what those blue flowers are called and what kind of meaning they hold. The shifting coral and orange sky makes him think about the sky in different countries - if people saw the same sky as him. Maybe in different countries there are more purples than pinks; maybe there are more ashy greys and a smoggy red sun from the wildfires. He wonders what kind of sky Mark had saw back in Vancouver. He wonders what kind of sky his father sees when he’s awake overnight. 

But most of all, he wonders what kind of sky Renjun will see when he returns to China.

iii.

Winter arrives with bare trees poised like ballet dancers and icy paths that crunched like sugar underfoot. Jaemin doesn’t see Mark for a while; Donghyuck gives him a conciliatory smile whenever they meet up without him and merely tells him, “The weather makes him unwell.” Jaemin isn’t sure what he’s exactly referring to when he says that, whether it’s a cold he only catches in the winter of some sorts or something of more significance. Jaemin thinks it’s the latter but he doesn’t pry.

It’s harder to go out for runs in the winter. Jaemin does it anyways even though he’s slipped on patches of ice and bruised his tailbone and scraped his palms a few times already, but he finds it more preferable than running in the rain. The unsettling thing is that the ghost follows him now, clinging to him like a magnet to steel. It hovers in the corner of his eye, inching closer to him whenever Jaemin sits at the dinner table alone or when he’s making the bracelets, and it looks at him from the front of his closet. 

It is now a ghost that haunts him everywhere he goes. Jaemin wants to tell it to go away, to leave him alone - but the more he wishes it to leave the more it stays. 

Over winter break, he hangs out with the others - most often freeloading over at Donghyuck’s cottage, fooling around in the arcade, or browsing around Renjun’s shophouse. Through all the whimsical antiquities, Jaemin finds interest in the snow globes, punch boards, little bells and whistles, magic rings, exploding fountain pens, and books that told you the meaning of dreams. 

But then he finds himself staring at a portrait of a child and a mother in a vintage frame - the artistic style stuck between surrealism and abstract. The woman had long black hair. The child looked young. They were smiling and holding hands. The mother’s hand looked particularly warm. 

He hears Donghyuck and Jeno laughing in the backdrop at something Ms. Huang said. Jaemin feels someone sidle up next to him. Renjun asks, “Do you like it?”

Jaemin debates over his answer. He stares at the dappy smile the child had on his rosy-cheeked face. “No,” he says. “Not really.” 

Renjun stares at him. Jaemin turns and pretends to miss his knowing gaze as he joins the other two by the counter. 

Mark does show up one day when they’re at Donghyuck’s cottage, watching a horror movie that Renjun was the only one paying attention to. Donghyuck was busy texting, Jeno was playing a game on his phone while Jaemin was falling asleep in Jeno’s lap. He’s waning in and out of consciousness until Jaemin is jostled awake from Jeno shifting his legs underneath his head. 

When he opens his eyes, he finds Mark standing at the threshold of the living room, wearing a fluffy jacket that covered half of his face. He doesn’t say a word when he sits down beside Donghyuck on the floor and stares at the screen of the laptop. Mark is known for his jellyfish heart when it comes to horror films but he barely reacts to the sequence of grotesque images. Jaemin falls back into a restless sleep. 

At some point, he wakes up to just the two of them. His head has migrated to Mark’s lap. He can hear the clinking of dinnerware from the kitchen and a string of muffled voices ranging from exasperation to disbelief. Coming out of his drowsy stupor, Jaemin realizes he’s hearing Renjun scold Jeno for almost putting a metal plate in the microwave. 

“Hi,” Mark says. He’s out of his fluffy jacket. The laptop is playing a romcom now. “I’m kinda jealous how you don’t snore in your sleep.”

“Mark Lee? Jealous of me? How cute,” Jaemin teases. He wipes the dried drool from his mouth with his sleeve and gets up. “What’re they doing?”

“Jeno complained about being hungry so they’re trying to make food. Donghyuck only knows the bare minimum and we didn’t want to wake you, so that leaves Renjun being the only one who knows how to cook properly.” Mark winces when a loud crash of a pan falling onto the floor reverberates from the kitchen. “I don’t think it’s going too great.”

Jaemin laughs and Mark offers a tiny smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. Jaemin brings his knees to his chest and wraps his arms around them. He glances out the window and discovers that it’s already dark, the night sky canopied with plumes of hazy clouds. 

“Do you like winter?” Jaemin offhandedly asks. 

Mark blinks owlishly at him. He averts his gaze and stares at the laptop. He seems to be lost in thought until the dimness in his eyes begins to clear up into a faint but brighter glow. “Sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I wish I can just pluck the months out of the year like a feather and blow the pain away, but then I remember all the good memories I’ve made since I moved here and it reminds me that maybe winter isn’t so bad after all.” He laughs a little sheepishly. 

Jaemin hums. “I’ve always been told that pain helps you grow.” 

“Well, yeah.” Mark threads his hand through the texture of the carpet. “But sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it just hurts. And I think that’s okay.”

Jaemin smiles wistfully at the hopeful note at the end of his words. He reaches over to pinch Mark’s cheek and Mark disgruntledly lets him. “I hope the good memories will always stay with you, Mark.” 

Mark has his mouth open as though he’s about to ask him a question, until they’re interrupted by brisk footsteps and a dramatic entrance by none other than Donghyuck, who’s sending a quick look of gratitude towards the ceiling while holding something in his hand.

“Oh, thank God you’re awake. Can you _please_ save my kitchen now before Jeno fucks something up? My mom’s gonna kill me and you people know how uptight she gets about her shit.” Then he grimaces. “Plus, I think Renjun’s _this_ close from selling Jeno to Satan for one corn chip.” 

Jaemin stands up with arms akimbo. “Well, I’ll be diddly darn damned. Is he at least better than Mark?”

“Oh, dude. Way fucking better.”

Mark looks comically insulted. Jaemin barks out a laugh and throws Donghyuck the okay sign, leaving the living room. But he slows down his pace and throws a quick glance over his shoulder. Donghyuck is sitting down beside Mark, knocking their knees together, before holding up a lollipop with a pink wrapper. Mark smiles as though he’s found his way back home after being lost at sea and takes it, and Jaemin realizes that only Mark can bring out the tenderness in Donghyuck. 

Jaemin turns back around and heads to the kitchen. He can hear Jeno and Renjun bickering; when Jaemin arrives, he sees Renjun rubbing his temples in pure agony while Jeno is smiling happily and mixing a bowl of mystery ingredients. Jaemin thinks it looks like shit. 

“Cooking is fun,” Jeno beams. 

“Um.” Jaemin catches Renjun’s distressed look. “I think I can take it from here, Jeno.” 

Jeno is happy to comply. He shoves the bowl into Jaemin’s hands and skips away. When Jaemin hears loud shouts from the living room, Jaemin assumes that Jeno had barreled the other two into a group hug. 

Jaemin brings the bowl up to his nose and sniffs. Dumbstruck, he blinks at Renjun. “This doesn’t smell too bad, actually.”

“Are you serious? Look. I don’t wanna go down as the dumbass who tried to eat frozen spam, soy sauce, and canned salmon mixed into an emulation of dog shit.” Renjun scowls, snatching the bowl from his hands and dumping the contents into the garbage. 

“If it’s of any consolation, you’ll probably be known as the most sensible out of all of us if our deaths are plastered all over the newspapers.”

“Flattery won't work when I'm dead, idiot.” 

Jaemin laughs. A light catches in Renjun’s eyes and his peevish expression ebbs into something softer. Jaemin stops when Renjun reaches forward and begins to neaten his messy brown hair, threading his fingers through his hair. The warmth of Renjun’s hand travels down to his chest - to his heart that knows things that his mind cannot explain. Jaemin doesn’t know what to do when Renjun treats him so fondly, as though he sees Jaemin as someone who belonged in his world. 

The blood rushes to his cheeks and Jaemin ungainly takes a step back, away from Renjun’s reach. His composure is floundering so he quickly changes tact before it becomes noticeable. “Are your hands even clean?”

Renjun frowns. A realization seems to dawn on him when his eyes widen. “Uh. Hm. Well? I mean, does grabbing a slab full of canned salmon out of Jeno’s hand count as clean?” 

Jaemin throws his head back and groans. “Ew. Renjun, that’s _disgusting_.” 

Renjun laughs, folding himself over at the sight of his bemused look. Jaemin huffs and rakes his fingers up and down his sides that makes Renjun yelp and retaliate with a punch or two to his arm. Jaemin attempts to escape his unwarranted wrath but is caught by Renjun wrapping an arm around his neck and pulling him into a headlock, strong enough to keep him fixed in spot while knuckling the top of his head with his dirty hand. Jaemin surrenders in high-pitched wails and Renjun finally shoves him away. They exchange an amicable glance in silence as Jaemin straightens his shirt before they break into a grin and burst into childlike laughter. When he sees Renjun’s eyes crinkle into happy crescents, a faint sense of wistfulness drapes over him like a wintry blanket of snow. 

Jaemin does not know if it is frightening or comforting in knowing that one day, everything will become a memory. Everyone will become a memory. Renjun will become a memory. And that memory will slowly fade into a mixture of water and oil, just like that blurry-faced ghost.

iv.

The holidays pass by relatively quick. None of them are avid celebrators of Christmas although they _do_ choose to celebrate the gift-giving part. Mark gets Jaemin a book by one of his favourite authors, Jeno gives him a giant bear hug in accomodation for Jaemin’s clingy tendencies (also because he’s broke from spending all his money on new shoes), Donghyuck gets him a corgi-shaped pillow, and Renjun vaguely tells him that his gift is still in the process of being made.

When it’s Jaemin’s turn, he tells them to open up their hands before he rummages through the smaller pockets of his backpack and takes out the candy-striped bracelets. There is a tinge of hesitation and doubt as he looks at them, but he hopes that the sentiment plaited in between the woven floss will show through. With a bashful smile, he drops a bracelet in each of their opened hands. 

“Oh my God.” Donghyuck holds the bracelet up to the ceiling light of his bedroom. “Only _you_ would make a friendship bracelet with all the colours of the rainbow, Nana.” 

“You made these?” Mark asks. “It must have taken a long time.” 

Jaemin shrugs with a smile. Jeno easily ties it around his own wrist, making Mark look at him in awe before he tries to emulate such a fast course of action but ultimately failing. Donghyuck ends up tying it for him. While the other three are busy helping each other, Jaemin finds Renjun quietly turning the bracelet over with his fingers stained with shadows of black paint. Jaemin holds out his hand and Renjun glances up at him. He lets Jaemin tie it around his wrist. 

“Thanks,” Renjun says with a certain whit of rigidity. He doesn’t look at Jaemin quite in the eye and he isn’t sure why.

“Yeah, thanks,” Jeno beams. “They’re really cool, Jaemin, especially since they’re hand made. Makes it even more special. But didn’t you make one for yourself, too?” He frowns. Jaemin follows his gaze and glances down at his own wrists. He lets out a breathy laugh when he realizes that - even though the bracelets are supposed to be a token of their abiding friendship, he’s completely forgotten about himself. 

“Must have slipped my mind.” He chuckles, circling his wrist with a hand. “I’ll make one for myself tonight, maybe.”

Donghyuck crosses his arms and huffs. “You better. They’re called _friendship_ bracelets for a reason. And just saying? This totally beats the toothpaste Mark got me.”

“Hey. Use it and maybe you’ll get better breath,” Mark retorts. Donghyuck shushes him and punches him in the shoulder. The implication seems to have immediately registered in Jeno’s orbit of understanding because he groans and falls onto his back, calling them gross, while the implication flies over Renjun’s head as he stares at them, clueless. Jaemin laughs and the earth seems to lighten underneath the weight of the sky’s melancholic afterglow. 

 

 

When they’re walking to the bus stop later that evening, an odd silence has settled over them - which is odd in itself. The silence between them is never odd. Jaemin wonders if he’s done something wrong but there is no trace of irritation shown in Renjun’s countenance. Rather, he seems absent minded. Maybe a little nervous, even, from how he keeps wringing his sleeves. 

Jaemin glances up at the moon suspended like a mandala in the sky, peeking out from behind a gauze of smog and spilling threads of silver light. A block before the crosswalk where they part ways, Renjun suddenly halts in the midst of their tread. Jaemin stops as well, watching as Renjun swings his backpack around to zip open one of the pockets, taking out an object Jaemin can barely discern before it’s tossed at his chest. He fumbles to catch it with a surprised shriek and saves it before it can fall onto the ground. 

“Be a little gentle, will you?” Jaemin grumbles out of petulance, ignoring Renjun’s eye roll and takes a better look at the object. It’s a small handmade book bound with string that is slightly bigger than the size of his palm with plain, oaktag covers. He looks back up at Renjun with a questioning frown.

“Merry fucking Christmas,” Renjun deadpans. 

“What?” Jaemin points at himself in disbelief. “A gift? For me? Really? I thought you said you weren’t done.”

“I lied. I didn’t want to show the others.”

“Why? What is this?”

Renjun knits his brows. His eyes skirt around the neighborhood as he wrings the sleeves of his coat. “Something that you want to do but can’t.” 

The suspense seizes him at the familiarity of those words. Jaemin gingerly governs the pages with his thumb and his eyes widen when he realizes that it’s a flipbook. There’s at least a hundred pages of silhouettes. And then he realizes that he is watching himself skate away and skate back before gliding into a figure eight, returning, pirouetting and making a lovely bow to his audience. 

And if Jaemin imagines hard enough, he can hear the sharp cut of the skate blades against the ice echoing past the swarms of laughter and yelling and can see the tracks made by the skaters, traces quickly erased of moments past, journeys taken. He can feel the gentle guidance of that warm hand and smell the ghost’s tuberose perfume. He is suddenly back on the ice rink as a naive child who has yet to be lost. 

His breath gets caught in the back of his throat. He stares at the end of the flipbook and the faint smudges of black paint on the corners of the oak tag cover. When Jaemin looks back up at Renjun, he is burning holes into the ground with his gaze. His hands are clenched. Jaemin fears that if his heart beats any fast and harder that it will leap out of his chest and into the air of an unrecognized truth, but it is a good thing his ribcage is there to protect his heart or else it might just explode. 

“I - Renjun, I - “ He doesn’t know what to say. He has nothing and too much to say because it feels like a dream. Jaemin is touching a creation made by Renjun’s hands and those hands made this creation just for him. 

And underneath the mercury vapor lamps where its mechanical light cascades through his dark hair, Jaemin finds it hard to believe in his own judgment when he notices a soft pink glow dust across Renjun’s cheeks. But maybe it was from the cold. Jaemin doesn’t know anymore. He never knows when it comes to Renjun. He is as confounding as the ever-shifting world where riddles are found within the cosmos that are tucked into its crevices. Jaemin cannot see through his eyes that are clear and sharp like a sword or a spear. 

“Thank you,” Jaemin finally manages to force out as he takes in a shaky breath. He cradles the book close to his chest with care and if his hands tremble he pretends that it is from the cold. “It’s - stunning. Thank you, really. I - thank you. I love it. I really - love it. I’ll treasure this forever.”

Renjun blinks at him. His stiff shoulders relaxes and his hands unclench. He looks awkward, now, as though he didn’t know what to do with his hands. “It’s nothing. I’m glad to hear you like it.” 

“I don’t just like it. I love it.” Jaemin laughs. He sees the lift of Renjun’s mouth and the warmth in his chest thickens. The words leave him before he’s even aware of what he’s asking. “Can I hug you?” 

Renjun crosses his arms. Uncrosses them. His lips part and Jaemin half-expects a rejection he is familiar with, but he’s faintly surprised when Renjun says, “Yeah. Okay.” 

Jaemin beams. He doesn’t waste a second when he rushes forward and tackles him into a bone crushing embrace, careful with the flipbook in his hand. He buries his face into the crook of Renjun’s neck and notices that he is just as warm and soft as he imagined him to be. And Renjun, albeit slowly, reciprocates the embrace, wrapping his arms around Jaemin’s waist and tightening his grip when Jaemin laughs into his neck. 

If only they can stand there with arms around each other underneath the eternal orange sky - maybe then Renjun won’t feel so far away. But they are like parallel lines - always close but never together. 

But Renjun being Renjun, notable for cutting off prolonged skinship, starts fidgeting before he croaks out, “You can let go of me now before I bust a lung.” 

Jaemin does. He withdraws his arms and steps back, his face flush, watching as Renjun fidgets with his coat. He glances up at the sky before scooping up his backpack from the ground after he’d dropped it for the hug and the silence between them brims with tacit truths. Jaemin wonders if Renjun holds back just as much as Jaemin does.  


“I have to go home,” Renjun says, his voice tapering into an uncertain silence. His gaze flickers from the flipbook to his face. “And make that bracelet, Jaemin. It’s not difficult to remember that a five-pointed star can’t work with only four.” 

Jaemin blinks. He glances down at his bare wrists and remembers how Renjun looked somewhat dismayed when Jaemin confessed he’d forgotten about himself. Renjun saw through Jaemin’s feelings of uncertainty, how he always chases after an unattainable sense of belonging and trivializes himself about his place in their world. And though it is foolish of him to ever have any doubt about their quaint circle at all, Jaemin has wished in silence and sung in tremors for far too long to ever expect the permanence of his place among the impermanence. 

But he looks down at the flipbook - the disillusioned nostalgia that contradicts the warmth it emanates. He smiles. “Yeah. Okay, Renjun. Okay.”

“Good.” Renjun nods, shifting his body at a half-turn. “Okay, then. Okay. I’ll - alright. See you, then.” 

Jaemin watches Renjun leave and pass the crosswalk, receding from his sight and leaving the stars to prance around his chest. It is cold but the moon shines warmly.

v.

Jaemin lies down on his bed and flips through the book for the nth time. He’s lost count. He watches himself glide around the ice as though he can manipulate gravity and longing tugs at the strings of his heart, fine lining the vestigial memory of the ice rink belonging to his childhood.

Time trickles by and when the clock hits two, Jaemin gets out of bed. Instead of going out for a run, he ends up spending the rest of his night making another bracelet for himself. Once he’s done, he ties it around his wrist and holds his wrist up to the lamp. When he thinks about Renjun’s words, Jaemin comes to a conclusion that they are all not so much of a constellation but the dots connecting the line of a single star, bringing it into full completion. Small but infinite. Connected through time and space and different planes.

vi.

They all spend the last few days of December fooling around in Donghyuck’s cottage, playing video games and quarreling over the tiniest things. Jaemin spends his nights over at Renjun’s for the majority of the holidays too. He likes the warm company of the Huang’s, but it is the talk about the imminent impermanence that makes unease blossom within him. Whenever Ms. Huang nags Renjun about his chores done half-heartedly, she asks how he’s supposed to live on his own when he goes off to university, and it only serves as a reminder to how everything is coming to an end soon. Time does not suspend. Time flees.

“If you think about it, nothing we do really matters.” Renjun draws a circle in the air. They’re lying down on his bed with the room faintly illuminated by the moon lamp. Renjun’s new paintings are hanging up on the walls by his desk. One painting was of the sea and the other a silhouette of a boy cradling the earth in his hands. 

Jaemin side-eyes him. “I know it’s, like, one in the morning, but isn’t it too early to start going all nihilistic?”

“I’m not being nihilistic. I’m being _realistic_. And this is what happens when you keep me up past midnight, idiot.” Renjun elbows him. “But seriously. When I think about working with space, there’s just so - much out there, you know? And then I start thinking how small and isolated and vulnerable we all are, how the things we do will never rival the complete vastness of the universe. Don’t you just find it scary how we’ll die one day, forgotten, without making our mark on the world to be remembered?” 

“Why would it be scary?”

“Well,” Renjun mumbles. “It’s like you never existed. There’s no proof that you lived. Nobody will know about Huang Renjun and his attempts in uncovering the unexplored parts of the universe. Nobody will know anything about him at all. Therefore, he never lived in a way.” 

Jaemin tilts his head to the side to face him. “But Huang Renjun made a mark in _my_ world. I know him as someone with strong moral principles and a curious soul. Therefore, he lived forever as the boy who brought happiness and peace in my heart.” He frowns. “Don’t you think changing a person’s life by just being in it is monumental in itself, Renjun? Small victories count.” 

Renjun is quiet but his gaze is loud. Jaemin is starting to think he’s said something wrong when Renjun tears his eyes away and looks up at the ceiling again, his voice gentle. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.” 

“When am I not?”

“Ninety-nine percent of the time.”

“Wow. Rude.” 

 

 

Most of the time, Jaemin retreats back to his apartment, stares at the ceiling and at a certain page of the flipbook, goes out for a run when his father is still not home at a late time, comes back to the empty unit and finally falls asleep. He ignores the dawdling ghost prodding at the edges of his vision. Jaemin thinks it’s attempting to speak to him, but he knows that it’s not possible. The ghost isn’t a real. It’s just a part of him. 

School begins after a new year and Jaemin doesn't expect it to be lonelier than usual. Renjun is busy maintaining his high grades and attendance records while applying for scholarships that he doesn’t have time to invite him to sleep over; Jeno is occupied with his demanding trade program; and Donghyuck is out most of the time searching for a job. Tired of morphing himself into somebody else when he is with his classmates, Jaemin finds himself sitting under the bleachers alone at lunch time a lot more often these days. 

Spending time at the thrift store is not the same as spending time with the people he has grown attached to. Satara sends him home early when she comments on his tired countenance, but that is the opposite of what Jaemin wants. He doesn’t want to go back to the forlorn silence that awaits him at the dinner table. 

But one night, he comes home to someone already waiting for him. 

His father is setting simple dishes of steamed vegetables and rolled omelettes down onto the dinner table. Jaemin didn’t expect him to be home. His father is never home at this hour. Jaemin didn’t even have the time and space to prepare himself for the oncoming discomfiture he can already feel bubbling in his chest. He is stunned into silence and is unable to move away from the doorway even as his father stands there and greets him with a tired smile. “Nana.” His voice is scratchy. “Just in time for dinner.” 

Jaemin swallows. He sets his backpack down against the wall. The room smells faintly of cigarettes. “You don’t have work?”

“They let me have a day off,” he replies as he walks back to the kitchen and reappears with bowls of rice and pairs of chopsticks in hand. He sets them down and runs his hand along the ridges of the chair and looks at his fingers. Dusty. Jaemin sees the weary lines etched onto his face and the heavy bags beneath his eyes. He’s gotten thinner. His father is a reticent man who once held his head high and back straight. Now, Jaemin barely recognizes him. 

“Come on,” his father beckons him quietly. “It’s been a long time since we’ve eaten together, haven’t we?”

Jaemin bites the inside of his cheek. He goes to sit in his usual spot and his father sits across from him. The empty spot to his right is suddenly too conspicuous. Too obvious. The ghost lingers behind his shoulder. Jaemin cannot find the thread left dangling between them after it had been severed years ago. And it’s strange how even though he wishes for the loneliness to vanish from his life, he is still lonely even as he eats with his father who has now become a familiar-faced stranger. 

He finds it hard to swallow the food even as he piles rice into his mouth with the silence looming over them. When he’s halfway done, his father is the first one to break the silence. “How’s school?”

“Fine,” is his terse reply. 

There’s a pause. “Ah, well. How are your grades?”

“Decent.”

“Any news about your upcoming graduation?”

“No.”

“Are you excited?”

“Sure.”

Jaemin keeps his gaze downcast. He knows that it’s not right for him to make this more difficult than it should be, but maybe it’s because Jaemin knows that whatever _this_ is won’t last; that pouring his heart out into rebuilding a semblance of a relationship with his father is transient because Jaemin will only go back to waiting for the sound of the door opening afterwards to make sure his father still comes home. But there is always that fear that one day, he will wake up alone in an empty house again just like that summer day of lingering tuberose perfume.

His father taps his chopsticks against the rim of his bowl in contemplated silence. “This stuffy apartment won’t do you much good when you graduate.” He presses his lips and puts his chopsticks down. He leans forward on his arms with a hesitant look. “Would it be better for you if we moved into something bigger?”

“I don’t mind this place,” Jaemin says, puzzled. “It’s what we can manage, isn’t it? It’s fine. I’m not picky or anything. We’ve lived here for years.”

“I know. But, say - somewhere less confined.” His father gives him a tiny, wistful smile. “Like the city.” 

Jaemin sucks in a deep breath. “No,” he croaks. 

His father sighs and leans back in his chair, his shoulders deflated. “I knew you were going to be unhappy with the idea, but think about it, Nana. You can’t live here forever. It’s not good. You are supposed to be out there in the world pursuing what you love - whatever it is. This town, this apartment - it’s tying you down. Don’t be like your old man, stocking merchandise every night. The city has better opportunities.”

“Of course I know,” Jaemin grinds out. His hands are shaking underneath the table. “Of course I _know_. You think I haven't thought about that? But what does _this_ mean, then? That you’ve already given up?”

His father’s voice is quiet, weary, as though he’s spent his entire life explaining this over and over again. “It’s been ten years, Nana. You know she’s not coming back, don’t you?” 

His stomach churns. Dread pushes against him like an invisible gale. He doesn’t want to listen anymore. Jaemin forces his legs to stand and he mumbles something along the lines of losing his appetite. The next thing he knows, he’s stumbling into his room and slamming the door shut. 

Jaemin sits in the darkness. His heart beats as if it would rather just stop and his chest tightens with every breath. He hates how a single conversation about the implication can suddenly undo everything he’s been cultivating and evading for the longest time. Jaemin glances at the ghost occupying the space in front of his closet where his childhood lays. It’s too quiet. Jaemin buries his face into his trembling hands. 

He doesn’t need other people to tell him what he already knows.

vii.

Jaemin has days where he doesn’t want to talk to anyone. Sometimes, he just wants to sit alone in a silent and empty room and think about nothing. But nothing always becomes something.

Those days usually pass but he’s not sure what makes this time different. The burden of his father’s words and the hurt that comes from being able to taste her name and hear her absence - it weighs down on him, sitting on top of his chest and making it hard to breathe. 

Maybe it is because he thinks about her a lot this time. He thinks about the memories stored in the textures of the carpet and the lights of their bungalow house. The impalpable ghost is lingering in front of his closet instead of slicing invisible peaches in the kitchen, spurring a faintly throbbing memory at the back of his head. The memory roams around the edge of his consciousness, unable to be put into definite shape as though someone had gone to a painting and rinsed parts of the wet paint away.

Disquietude worms its way into his head and he can barely feel the thud of his heart. It’s like he’s swathed in cotton. 

He's on inexplicable edge, something uncomfortable worming underneath his skin that won't go away even when he roughly scrubs at his skin in the shower. The bitterness remains. The others notice, of course, despite Jaemin's best efforts in concealing his true feelings. They're walking to the arcade one day after school to meet with Mark, with Jaemin trailing behind them and not quite registering his surroundings as he measures his steps. Donghyuck cracks a few jokes and he hears Renjun laugh. Jaemin feels a little far away from his own body when Jeno's inquisitive voice brings him out of his reverie.

"You're extra quiet today, Jaemin," Jeno asks. They slow down to a halt. "Something up?"

"Nothing's up. Just tired." 

Renjun studies him quietly. "You don't have to come with us if you're not feeling up to it."

"It's fine. I want to." 

"I'd offer to buy coffee but that'd just make things worse." Donghyuck grins and puts his hands on his hips. "Nothing like a heated competition of Pac-Man can't help. I bet I can beat _two_ of your highest scores. How does that sound, Nana - "

"Don't call me that," he snaps, startling Donghyuck to take a step back, and Jaemin blanches when he immediately recognizes how harsh he sounded. Everyone else stares at him in varying degrees of astonishment and guilt burrows into his chest. Jaemin didn't mean to sound so harsh. He wasn't thinking when he opened his mouth. Jaemin doesn't know what it is about that name that worsens the discomfort underneath his skin, making him want to tear himself apart so he can get rid of it. He hates the name. He hates the memories the name brings him. 

Jaemin faintly realizes that his hands are trembling. His stomach is churning. He needs them to stop staring. He needs time to stop. He needs everything to stop. "Sorry," he chokes before he turns around and runs home. 

Jaemin doesn't talk to them after that. He can't bring himself to. 

He finds himself stuck in a strange internal limbo. His senses are foggy and muddled yet at night his mind is awake and brimming with unwanted memories. He throws his phone at the ghost out of frustration one night, only to have it hit the closet door that resulted in a cracked screen. Jaemin doesn't sleep much. 

He doesn’t go to school. Sometimes, he just sits at the bakery when the dawn chorus rises, sipping on bitter coffee and hoping he would feel a little more alive. He doesn’t. 

When he does go to school, he doesn’t go to class. Every step he takes feels like he’s stepping in quicksand and trying to escape from it. Jaemin can barely keep up a conversation with his usual fervor and uplifting smile. Everyone asks how he is and Jaemin knows he looks worse than usual, but he can’t bring himself to lie and merely shakes them off. He’s too tired to care.

At one point, Jisung finds him waning in and out of a restless nap underneath the bleachers again, his elbows and knees covered in teddy-bear bandages. But Jaemin is too far away to jolt himself out of his half-slumber. When he opens his eyes again, Jisung isn’t there anymore. It’s Renjun. 

Renjun’s voice is clipped. “I assume you’re developing a new life style, Jaemin. Living like a rat under there all the time.” 

Jaemin sits up and rubs his eyes. He sees a shadow in his periphery glitch and he shakes his head, taking in a deep breath. When he leaves the bleachers and leisurely dusts his pants, he says not unkindly, “Well, leave me and my new lifestyle alone, then. I’m fine. Go back to doing scholarships and all that.” 

“Is that all you have to say after you've been ignoring everyone again? Even that lady you volunteer for called me yesterday night because you put my number as your emergency contact. What the hell, Jaemin.” Renjun sounds genuinely angry and Jaemin steps back, feeling as though he’s being dragged down underwater with an anchor tied around his ankle. “Do you get a kick out of worrying the shit out of people? I don’t know what’s going on with you but do you _ever_ stop thinking about yourself? Why are you so keen on pushing us away when _you’re_ the one who wants us to stay?”

Jaemin recoils at the mention of his own hypocrisy. At Renjun’s words, it is so deplorable that something in him shatters into nothing, because everything he has been holding onto for years has always been worth nothing. There is a tremor in his voice. “You don’t know anything.” 

“Then _tell_ me because you sure do leave people in the dark a lot for someone who so desperately wants to stay in this hellhole.” 

“You don’t _understand_ ,” he flares but his hands are trembling. “You _won’t_. You just won’t. Renjun, you don’t have anyone you’re waiting for here. You’re _free_. My dad wants to move to the city when I graduate and I can’t - I can’t just leave. I can’t just easily leave this place like you and everyone else can.”

Renjun stares at him. His arms are still crossed and his posture is still rigid with indignation, but his voice is soft when he asks, “Why can’t you leave, Jaemin?” 

Jaemin squeezes his eyes shut, but when he opens them again, the ghost is still lingering behind Renjun’s shoulder, watching him with its blurry-faced despondency. 

It’s still there, always waiting. Always, always waiting. 

Red fills his vision. It’s unfair. He _hates_ it. He hates this pathetic hope that has done nothing but brought him pain because that ghost will never be replaced with the real person and anger fills his entire body like melted bronze being poured into a wax mold. Everything he has buried within that safe-deposit box is no longer brewing in its own ambivalence. It is pouring out into the world; into the winter skies that lament after him for Jaemin wants to tear the bungalow house down with his screams and press his hands against the chipped walls and claw for answers underneath the copper wires. He wants to unearth the whole universe so that anything from the inner vessels of a billion-aged nebula can answer him in the magnitude of all his desolation and tell him why he’s so unwanted by that woman he loved so _much_. 

Jaemin doesn’t know what happens next. He hears Renjun calling after him before it was replaced with the blaring of car horns. He realizes that he’s running. He’s running back home. The pounding noise of his sneakers matches his heart throbbing inside his chest with thick grief. Fire burns in his lungs and licks up his parched throat but he doesn’t stop even as he runs up the stairs of his apartment building and pushes past his door, heading towards his room. He rips his closet door open and hauls for answers. 

Underneath all his folded clothes and shoe boxes filled memories, he finds his ice skates - dusty, wrinkled on its flaps with threadbare laces, and small - the size fittable for a seven year old boy. And in those skates, he can feel the warmth of that warped hand and hear the gentle voice that appears in his far away dreams whispering to him: “Good job, Nana.” 

Jaemin bolts out of the apartment with the skates in his hands. All he hears is white noise and all he sees are tall buildings and street lights mixed into a blur as he runs down the streets, until everything begins to dwindle into trees that mock him with the approach of spring in its budding leaves and fields of pampas grass. And then he’s running in the woodlands, tripping over overgrown vines and protruding roots, when he stops before an oak tree. He stares at it, rasping, and doesn’t think when he winds his arm back and throws one of the skates towards the tree with all the strength he can muster. Jaemin does the same with the other. Everything is still red.

He storms towards where the skates had fallen, drops to his knees, and clutches them in his hands. If he holds them tight enough until his arms begins to ache, maybe the answers would come falling out of its splitting seams, but there’s nothing. Nothing. He’s been holding onto nothing this whole time.

Absolutely nothing.

Jaemin doesn’t notice the sun setting behind the lilac mountains, cascading the sky in dark violets, when he hears the brittle leaves crunch underneath slow footsteps and someone crouches down beside him. There is the smell of his favourite fabric softener and cherry blossoms. A hand with a watercolour birthmark gently rests over his cold hands that have been trembling from holding the skates too tightly for so long. Jaemin wonders if it is a sign to let go. 

The trees lament. Jaemin should have known that the hope he has built a home for would collapse into nothing but a hypaethral foundation of his childhood house. Jaemin thinks that the only growing he has done over the past few years is grow tired. 

“Do you know what I think about the most?” Jaemin tries to laugh but it comes out as a choked sound. “I think about my mum.”

“Jaemin - “

“No. _No_ , you wanted me to tell you, so I'm telling you right now. I think about her so much that I can’t even remember how she looks like anymore and I can’t even remember how it feels like to _love_ her anymore because it just feels like trying to hold water in my hands while it forms puddles at my feet. She promised she would come back but she never did. Why didn’t she come back, Renjun?” 

Renjun guides the back of Jaemin's head to his shoulder. His arms wrap around him. “I don’t know, Jaemin. I’m sorry.” 

Something wet drips down from his eyes. The anger in him is washed away by every shade of blue in the world and he finally crumples. “I loved her so much.”

Though his mother is no more than a stranger but less than a friend, he remembers how she would lovingly caress the side of his face with her soft fingertips like she would do with the pages of her books. He remembers watching her wash, peel, and slice peaches for him to eat in the hot summer before reading his favourite passages from The Little Prince to him. He remembers her fighting with his father a lot, but he knows that all parents fight, and their fighting never escalated. They would always reconcile the morning after, sharing coffee and solitude.

But most of all, he remembers her sitting by his bedside one night, telling him in a brokenhearted voice he had been too young to understand back then: “I promise I'll come back, Nana. We can go skating when I come back. Just stay and be a good boy, okay? Just stay.”

So, Jaemin did as he was told. He woke up on time for school, stepped on his right foot before the left when he got out of bed, tucked his shirt in, kept his shoes clean and washed his hands with soap for thirty seconds. He stepped onto a stool and washed the dishes when his father seemed to have caught a certain sickness that left him too tired to get out of bed. Jaemin played with his toys as quietly as possible and religiously followed his routine in hopes that his actions, linked to the fate of his mother’s return, would make her come back sooner. 

He tried to be good but maybe he wasn’t good enough. He stayed and waited for her everyday and every night that left him awake in a sleeping town, wondering where and why she left. All he knows is that when she left, she took a piece of his identity with her too.

“Jaemin.” Renjun gently withdraws from the embrace. His warm hands wrap around Jaemin’s shaking ones. “I think it’s time you let go of them, now.” 

Jaemin blinks away his blurry vision. When he focuses on the skates, he realizes that he should have let go years ago when the skates had no longer fit him. There is no use in keeping them anymore. There is no value nor sentiment. He is never going to use them again. This hope he’s been protecting from shattering is so inherently brittle, so fragile, that Jaemin can no longer piece it back together in denial. 

With a shaky breath, he forces his fingers to loosen and he lets the skates fall from his hands. He stares at them on the ground. He feels stupid. He feels pain. But the emptiness is promptly replaced with the warmth of Renjun’s hands intertwining with his and when Jaemin glances up, Renjun has moved so he is crouching in front of him now, the unchanging steadiness in his expression more comforting than his father’s eyes full of pity. 

“Jaemin, there are - people who aren’t meant to be in your life and there are people who are. And the people who are will stay without relying on a promise to support their credibility.” Renjun says. “You don’t need to do this to yourself anymore. You don’t - you don’t need to wait for someone who never had the intentions of coming back in the first place. You’ve let go of those skates. You can let go of her too.” 

But there is still a tiny part of him that still continues to hope, but that illogical hope is as impermanent as a passing sigh, and just like the fickle skies and the fleeting souls that pass by this town, the hope for an unreachable ghost will vanish too - even if it takes days, weeks, months and uncountable years. 

Jaemin looks down at their interlocked hands. “Is it really that easy?”

“No,” he answers. “Letting go is never easy, but think about it. She let you go from the moment she left. So, from this point on, shouldn’t you?”

“What if I can't?”

“Then why do you need to cling onto her just to live?” 

He doesn’t know what to say because Renjun always knows what to say that leaves his mind blank. Though his chest feels lighter, it feels as though the pinnacle of exhaustion has crushed him and his body is finally registering the exertion and burnout. But he manages a quiet, dry laugh when he thinks about those old skates. "It's stupid, isn't it, how it's been so long and I'm still like this."

"It's a process," Renjun says. "Not a competition about how fast you can recover from a childhood affliction."

Jaemin falls quiet. Renjun takes his silence as an answer and he gives Jaemin a tiny smile. Renjun tugs at his hands as he slowly gets up from the ground, guiding Jaemin up as well. “Come on. It's freezing. Let's go home.”

Home. Jaemin glances around him, searching for the ghost. And in the far distance it lingers behind a tree, fading into the sunset afterglow. “Okay.”

His legs wobble, however, when he tries to follow Renjun. He can’t even feel his legs. It feels like he was sucked right into a vacuum, regurgitated back out, and pieced together whole again with cracks between the severed lines. When he's finally able to stand properly, he watches in curiosity as Renjun has his back facing him, poised with knees bent and hands curved. Renjun glances over his shoulder with a disgruntled look and that’s enough of a sign for Jaemin to involuntarily smile and fold himself over Renjun’s back. 

Jaemin glances down at the frayed skates as Renjun shifts his weight on his back. Renjun says, “I’ll come back and get them tomorrow. Don’t worry about it.”

Jaemin nods. As Renjun begins to trek out of the woodlands and through the streaks of the evening hues that spill through the towering branches of the trees, he whispers, "Thank you."

"None of that," Renjun says. Jaemin can't see his face. "You would do the same for me."

Jaemin closes his eyes. He thinks that Renjun truly is the north star. 

 

 

They sit in the bus. Jaemin is leaning his head against the window, watching as everything passes by him in a blur. He didn’t know he ran so far, having been too harrowed and disembodied with grief to think about the pain in his legs and lungs and heart.

The stark trees stand like silhouettes out of a charcoal painting, but in the far distance, Jaemin can see the peek of a waxing moon beginning to conquer the night. If the sun can still shine during the night, replacing the cold with its warmth that would spill over the empty space in his bed like how the moonlight caresses the back of his neck from above in a stroke of coldness, then perhaps sleep would come easy. 

But sleep never comes easy for people like him. There is a vacuum inside of him that will never cease because that part of himself will never be rightfully returned, but Jaemin thinks about the road. He thinks about the cold mix asphalt filling the potholes. Maybe he can do the same to his heart - fill it with the tiny, little things that make him feel happy like the bakery’s egg tarts, the bitter aftertaste of coffee, the warmth of hugs, the feeling of passing a test and seeing the smiles on other people’s faces, and love. Maybe love. 

And though there will be cracks and holes and gaps, it will be whole. And he will no longer need her. 

There’s a nudge on his leg and Jaemin blinks over to his right-hand side. Renjun has his phone in hand and asks, “Is it okay if my mom knows? Not everything, I mean, but enough so she can get off my back for skipping last period. Either the school started to be responsible again and phoned my landline or Jeno did a terrible job lying when he dropped our shit off at my house.”

Jaemin mumbles his permission and in the middle of turning his head again, a stark realization dawns on him and he whips his head back, suddenly more awake. “Wait. What? You missed class?”

Renjun pauses in the middle of texting, confused. “Yes?”

“You missed _class_?” 

“No, I went to fucking Mars. Of course I missed class. What did you think?” 

Jaemin frowns in consternation. He remembers dozing off but his perception of time at that moment wasn’t quite intact. Jaemin knows that Renjun would rather venture down the school’s abandoned basement than skip a class because in the sunspot of Renjun’s pristine and orderly world, Jaemin has always thought it to be his future. Skipping is not in his precise routine. 

Before Jaemin can utter the apology sitting at the tip of his tongue, Renjun taps him on the forehead and interrupts him. “If you were going to apologize for something that’s not your fault and was a product of bad parenting skills, then I will knock you the hell out. Besides, I’m pretty sure they can overlook _one_ single unexcused absence since my grades are spectacular. If not, my mom can choose to either leave it or bargain the principal like she’s at the supermarket.” 

That elicits a mild laugh out of Jaemin, and Renjun smiles. Jaemin faintly notices that the bus has become emptier now. “And hey. Just so you know, you’re still the same cheesy nuisance I dislike most of the time with the occasional sprinkle of respect. What happened doesn’t change how I see you. It just makes me understand why you are the way you are now.” 

Jaemin manages a weak chuckle. He watches as a tall man in a business suit from the back walks down the steps and leaves through the automatic doors of the bus. A gust of wind rushes in, raising goosebumps along his arms. Or maybe it is from Renjun being able to read his underlying thoughts so clearly before Jaemin can even stew in them. _To not be misunderstood is a nice feeling._

“Thanks,” he whispers, a smile ghosting his lips as he glances down at lap as he plays with the stray threads of his jeans. “You’re too nice to me sometimes, you know that? It’s hard to understand why.”

“Well. When you can’t look on the bright side, I’ll be with you in the dark.” Renjun replies. Jaemin glances up at Renjun in time to see Renjun reciprocate the steady gaze. In the glossy reflections of the windows and the fluorescent lights, Jaemin sees the tiny curlicues of stars, cradling the answers that Jaemin is not permissible to peek into, in the dark of his eyes. “What’s so hard to understand about that?” 

_Everything,_ Jaemin thinks. _Everything about you is hard to understand_. He presses his lips together, unable to formulate a response and instead, rests his head on Renjun’s shoulder and forgets his masks. The warmth is too much to bear when Renjun rests his head on top of his after a tentative silence. 

Amidst this sunborn town with all its good and bad, Jaemin believes in the flickering hope that one day, everything will be okay. 

And it is at this very moment that he realizes that that tender memory of the ice rink is nothing but a handful of dust, and he no longer has to wait in order to live anymore. 

 

viii.

 

Jaemin wakes up to quietude. 

Sunlight streams past his curtains, illuminating the entirety of his room. With a crick in his neck, he slowly sits up from his bed, blinking at the walls that stare back in all its dullness. But there’s something different. The world around him looks a little brighter, a little bit warmer, and a little less static. 

He wonders if this is how Mark had felt when he began to lift his chin up and no longer shied away from opening himself up to the hearts of others. Jaemin wonders if he can ever achieve that same level of growth, but he knows that everybody’s narrative is different. Jaemin might never get over his mother’s abandonment but he would learn how to manage it. The wound will heal but the scar will remain.

But Jaemin isn’t alone. He may be stuck at the crossroads as he watches everyone leave, but Jaemin isn’t alone. The fireflies would be gone, the ponds would have dried up and the plants would be wilted, but his chest will become spring after the risk of winter. The dead flowers in his ribcage will bloom again. 

And his mind will become the eternal orange sky.


	3. absence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> jaemin talks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: haha next chapter is gonna be short guys it's the end!!!!! :-)  
> also me: [writes 20k instead] 
> 
> i am. so SORRY.... idk how it ended up this long I EVEN WROTE MORE THAN THE FIRST FIC ?? this is what happens when i write slow burn.. plus i just. rlly love writing the personal growth arc & i wanted to wrap everything up w/o leaving anything hanging. i had to split the ending into 2 parts TT

The hardest part of letting go is learning how to start all over again.

It is a pain of its own kind. When his body is pinned down to his bed by exhaustion and he cannot move, he thinks about the stories his mother told him every night she tucked him to bed. Her stories proposed to him that all forms of life were malleable and that everything in the world could as easily be something else. Maybe that is why Jaemin shapeshifts into different caricatures - if he was someone else, something else, then perhaps he was worth wanting.

Having been stuck in the comfort of his own denial and of his own desperation for an expired love, living without that shield felt like exploring an uncharted territory with his defenses down. And though those skates no longer inhabit the bottom of his closet and those shoe boxes of old mementos and wrinkled pictures are ready to be disposed of, letting go felt like hitting the pavement face first on the ground. Then again, holding on felt like getting hit by a train he’s seen coming for miles. 

But Jaemin has come to the realization that there is more to life than waiting for somebody who never intended to come back to you. There is more to life than just _waiting_. 

And maybe in the middle of letting go, he will learn to hold onto himself. 

xii. 

For the longest time as a child before loneliness became more familiar to Jaemin than his own father, his father would say to him, “Even if your mother isn’t here, Nana, she will always be with you in your heart.”

But that was the thing Jaemin didn’t understand. It didn’t matter if she was still living on in his blurry memories or in his heart. An unseen mother couldn’t take you out for long walks in the summer skylight or help you with your homework, the familiar scent of her tuberose perfume in your nostrils as she leaned in to correct your grammar; or read to you on rainy afternoons with a cup of tea; or teach you the basics of embroidery and knitting. An unseen mother couldn’t tuck you into bed and kiss your forehead goodnight or slice you fresh peaches to eat together. 

Jaemin wanted her to stay. He had no brothers and no sisters, and while he loved his father, it would be true to say that he loved his mother more. But Jaemin won’t wait for her anymore, just like how he won’t wait for time to heal his wounds. 

That doesn’t mean he knew where to start, though. 

Jaemin stares at the painting of the boy holding the world in his hands in between the gaps of light from the sallow streetlamps filtering through the shutter windows and splattering across the walls. There’s a nudge to his elbow. He looks from the painting and to Renjun who was frowning at him. They’re sitting beside each other on the floor against the bedside after Jaemin had showed up unannounced in the evening, although it didn’t come as a surprise anymore since he’s been spending most of his time over at the shophouse lately. If he wasn’t recollecting himself in the tenderness of solitude, then he was at the Huang’s, finding comfort in their unity. 

“I don’t have all the answers, Jaemin,” says Renjun, after a long and thoughtful silence. Even in the incomplete darkness, Jaemin can see Renjun’s eyes undo every piece of his jigsaw puzzle heart until Jaemin was nothing but a carapace. “There are no shortcuts. Grieving the loss of someone who is still alive is one of the hardest things in the world you can do. You just have to - I don’t know. Work through it, I guess.”

"Yeah, I know." Jaemin purses his lips and brings a hand to his chest, where discomfiture sits. “It's kinda funny, isn’t it? How much I love the world, yet I don’t love how it makes me feel sometimes.” 

“I think that experience is universal.” Renjun presses their shoulders together and Jaemin turns his head, his breath catching when he realizes how close their faces are. Renjun’s voice drips of warmth that trickles down into his heart. “What do you think you should do?”

Jaemin thinks about the unspoken words brimming in the crevices of his lackluster apartment. He thinks about the hills of unwashed dishes and a heap of dirty laundry; the leaks in the ceiling and the smell of cigarette smoke that lingers whenever he comes home; the ghost that follows and follows until it merges with the morning skylight. He thinks about his father and how he’s just like his mother - absent in different ways. They haven’t talked properly since their last conversation over the dinner table. His father has been smoking a lot more. 

“Talk,” Jaemin answers. “Talk to my dad.” He pauses. “And to Donghyuck, to Jeno, and to Mark. Apologize. Do you think they’ll forgive me?”

“Please. They’d move mountains for you.” Renjun scoffs. “They’re not mad, you know. I mean, Hyuck is still kind of pissed and Jeno’s been pretty quiet these days, and the reason they’re not hunting you down is because I said you were in a tough spot and needed some time alone. But they’re just worried, you know? Because if you haven’t been told this already - you have the _excruciating_ habit of worrying others.”

Jaemin smiles out of guilt. A gauzy overlay of wistfulness settles over him; he’s missed the others, but he just wants to feel alright before he faces them - before he faces the world, really. It’s pathetic how the last thing he wants to do is make others worry about him, yet that seemed to be the only other thing he’s good at. “I feel like an apology isn’t enough.”

“What do you mean? Just be honest, Jaemin. All they ever wanted from you is honesty.” When Jaemin doesn’t answer, Renjun draws in a slow breath. “Jaemin, unfortunately enough, they love your mushy ass. You think a disappearing act is going to destroy that? You need to have more faith in your dumb friends. Including me.” 

An unwarranted laugh crawls up his throat and he slaps a hand over his mouth to silence himself, hoping he hasn’t woken up Renjun’s parents. Jaemin slowly slides his hand away, revealing an incredulous smile. “How do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“You're not afraid to be honest. Why? How? How are you so certain? I don't know how you do it.” Because Jaemin has always found it easier to pretend he didn’t feel anything than express his emotions and feel obliged to explain them, because the more he tried to explain himself, the less he understood himself. 

“You do know you’ve met my mom, right? And I think everyone prefers honesty but rarely gives it. I simply don’t want to be a hypocrite. That’s all.” Renjun shrugs. “Besides, a lot of misunderstandings can be solved if you just be honest.”

Jaemin hums, his eyes downcast. “Yeah. I guess so, huh.” 

Jaemin pretends he doesn’t notice Renjun’s eyes staring at the side of his face. Renjun changes tact. “Jeno’s hanging out at Hyuck’s place this Saturday as usual, if you wanna go crash the party. I’m tired of dealing with pissy people.” 

“Does that mean you get tired of dealing with yourself too?”

“I will _and_ can kick you out of my house.”

Jaemin snickers. “Won’t you be there?”

“I can’t. I have to attend this student orientation for university over a Skype session. Plus, I have to look over the shop because my mom’s got a _mahjong_ game with her friends she can’t miss because apparently, her pride and dignity are on the line.” 

“Oh.” At the mention of university, the muscles in his face tightens. Jaemin is glad that his face is concealed by the darkness, because though he cannot tell what kind of face he has on, he knows that Renjun will see right through it like a mirror to his soul. Jaemin stares up at the ceiling, wondering if all this buildup of longing will ever go away in his heart. 

Even if Renjun can’t see him, he can still hear him, and Jaemin has never been an expert in concealing his emotions through speech. Renjun’s sigh was a telltale sign that he’s picked up on what Jaemin was thinking, and Jaemin bites the inside of his cheek. He directs his attention to Renjun’s hand resting in the space between them on the floor. Jaemin can easily place his hand over on top of his, but Renjun was too close to miss but too far to touch. But perhaps Jaemin has always been drawn to everything that is unreachable - the orange sky, the sense of belonging, and Renjun.

After they’ve rested in silence, quiet like flowers closed in the night, Renjun speaks up, “You’re wrong, you know.”

Jaemin glances over at him. Renjun was wringing his sleeves. “About what?” 

“About how I don’t have anyone I’m waiting for here.” He tilts his head to the side and the sallow light dimly spilling through the shutter windows streaks over his face in triptychs. “You’re wrong about that.”

His words prompt nothing but a blank slate in Jaemin’s mind. He doesn’t know why Renjun brought it up in the first place, and by the time Jaemin wants to ask more, Renjun is already getting up from the floor, effectively ending the conversation with a, “It’s late. I’m going to go wash up first.” 

Jaemin blinks at his receding figure as Renjun leaves the room. Jaemin is left alone with the echo of his words brewing in the silence. He looks back up at the ceiling. 

His heart trembles. Jaemin doesn’t know if he wants to know who Renjun is waiting for. 

 

xi. 

 

Jaemin carries Renjun’s words with him in his heart. He waits for his father to come home.

He was too restless and too impatient to sleep that he ends up lying outside on the couch, and though the wait feels all too familiar, it was also different. He waited for a different purpose. He thumbs through the flipbook underneath the soft glow of the lights outside, memorizing each and every brush stroke of the silhouettes that was illuminated by an aura of disillusioned nostalgia. Jaemin watches himself skate back and forth as though he was chasing after an unseeable creature, and when he glances up from the flipbook, he sees the blurry-faced ghost linger in the kitchen, weaving between the shadows as it watches him from afar. Jaemin looks back down. He wonders what Renjun did with the skates.

Jaemin puts the flipbook aside when his father finally staggers into the unit in his hunched form at the same time Jaemin usually leaves for school, and he freezes at the sight of Jaemin still awake and reclined on the couch, hand still gripped around the doorknob. “Nana?”

“Morning,” says Jaemin. 

“What’re you still doing here?” His father asks as he closes the door behind him and places his bag over the table. He grabs himself a can of beer from the fridge before he shuffles towards the couch to sit beside Jaemin. He can closely see his father’s weary and sunken face and his uneven stubble. He has aged and dulled in a way Jaemin didn’t know was possible. And when Jaemin thinks about it, he doesn’t have many memories with his father as much as he did with his mother. 

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“Don’t you have school?”

“Yeah, but I’m not feeling well.” Jaemin pauses, looking up at the crack in the ceiling. “I’ve always been feeling unwell, I think.” 

His father’s brows knit into a frown. “What did you want to talk about?” he asks quietly as he cracks open his can of beer and takes a tentative sip. Jaemin sits up from the couch and glances out the window, noticing his faint reflection. 

Jaemin has thought about what he wanted to say to his father. He wanted to ask his father why he chose now to want to leave, why he didn’t want to leave sooner, why he didn’t stop Jaemin from holding onto something so empty, and why his mother left in the first place. He has so many questions, so many demand for answers that not even heaven’s hand can bestow to him, but all he says is, “I’m sorry.” 

His father falls silent. Jaemin shifts his gaze from the window to his father who is now running a calloused hand over his face, shielding his expression, and the courage elicited from the memory of Renjun’s solace prompts Jaemin to continue, “For being passive - for pretending that this was okay when it really wasn’t. Sometimes, I was just so - _angry_ at you because I felt like I lost you too. I couldn’t sleep because I was scared of you leaving me too. I couldn’t sleep because I didn’t want to miss the day she’d come back. But I wasn’t the only one hurting and it was selfish of me to have thought that.” 

“ _No_.” His father had his face covered with his chapped hands, but when he sits back in his seat and looks up at the ceiling, Jaemin doesn't know what to do or say when he notices the thin glossy sheen over his red-rimmed eyes. He sounds so tired. “You have nothing to be sorry for, Nana. _I_ am the one who is sorry. _I_ am the one who left you alone, didn’t I? I’m your father. I was supposed to be there for you yet - I’m so sorry, Nana. I did this. You were just a kid, so full of love, and I couldn’t - I just couldn’t tell you and watch all that love disappear. I didn’t know what to do. I’m so sorry, Nana. I’m no better than your mother.” 

Jaemin is stunned into silence as he watches his father wipe his wet eyes, turning his emotions jagged and insides tight. Something inside of him cracks into tiny splinters that punctures his bleeding fist of a heart and his voice turns thick and wobbly. “No, you - don’t say that. Don’t - we don’t need her. We don’t need her.” He reaches over to grab his father’s hands and holds them tightly just like Renjun had done to him. 

“ _I_ don’t need her. I learned how to cook, how to clean, how to navigate the world, how to - how to be _happy_ and how to _love_ without her. I learned and made mistakes without her. I made friends and new memories without her. And you know what? I’ll graduate without her. I’ll leave this town without her. I’ll find a dream without her. I’ll be good enough without her. So I don’t need her, okay? I don’t, I don’t, I _don’t_ ,“ Jaemin grinds out but clamps his mouth shut when everything begins to blur. His father gathers his shaking form into his arms and tightly embraces him, and that is when the grief punches through his muscles, bones, and guts. He lets his heart yank in and out of his chest, pulling back in like a yo-yo. Over and over. In and out. His voice breaks. “I just want to know _why_.”

“I don’t know, Nana. I wish I knew. I wish I could tell you why.” His father withdraws from the embrace and holds Jaemin by the shoulders, murmuring, “There are some things in life that you just don’t know, and your mother happens to be one of those things.“

And when Jaemin looks into his father’s eyes, he remembers seeing the infinite possibilities of loving in them before he had aged and the light in his eyes had extinguished, but in the murky afterglow of the overcast sky where the sun peeks through the thick clouds for a fleeting moment, Jaemin notices the dim flame of hope flicker back to life. 

“But you are the reason I continue to wake up, Nana. So I can give you a better life. Better than the life this town had given you. You're my son. You’ve always been strong. Don't let this define who you are and what you can be.” His father wipes the tears from Jaemin’s cheeks and Jaemin does the same to him, and his father lets out a watery laugh. 

He brings Jaemin into his arms again and holds him tight and his father no longer feels like a ghost. Bit by bit, with the filaments of the misty sunlight and the warmth of his quiet love, it brings him back into a concrete form - something of tangibility - that makes his father feel closer and homelier and less like a stranger. Jaemin holds his father back and feels his heart ache in relief that he is finally able to reach him. 

And as he buries his face into his father’s shoulder, Jaemin glances up and notices the blurry-faced ghost linger by the dinner table - fading, fading, fading. 

x.

 

And fading it continues.

The ghost stops following him. It was now fixed in a single spot in the corner of his room, its blurry figure merging with the skylight of dawn and blending in with the shadows of dusk. The ghost dwindled, hid, and came back to ebb. Jaemin doesn’t see it as vividly as before; it no longer sliced invisible peaches in the kitchen nor does it try to speak with Jaemin at night as though it was trying to tuck him to bed and read him passages from _The Little Prince_. 

And Jaemin takes it as a sign that he’s doing a right thing and that he’s on the right path, no matter how ambivalent and conflicted it makes him feel.

Jaemin tells Renjun what happened over the phone the night after. All he receives from Renjun in a sleepy voice is, “See how simple things can be when you _talk_?” Right before he crashes and suddenly starts to snore into the line. Jaemin sighs. He deserved the subtle jab. 

Though Jaemin continues to rarely see his father for the majority of the day, they’ve picked up the severed strings of their relationship and have begun to mend something that, in the past, Jaemin had thought to be implausible. And Jaemin knows that there were still too many things left unresolved but he has hope that, one day, they will reach a higher, happier place. _Baby steps_ , Mark would say to him. 

He’s over at the shophouse one day, helping Ms. Huang prepare soup and dinner after she has closed the shop early when a heavy downpour had manifested over the town. Jaemin soaks the red dates, astragalus roots and codonopsis roots in water before he drains them and pours the herbs into the pot of water, plopping in a piece of flattened ginger before closing the lid. When he glances out the window, he notices the gunmetal grey clouds crowding the sky as rain pelted against the glass panes. It sounds as though heaven was knocking on the door, demanding to be let in. 

“Jaemin,” Ms. Huang leisurely speaks up after a comfortable silence, “how is your sleep lately? Do I need to make more tea?” 

Jaemin tilts his head in thought. Sleepless nights are constant. He still finds himself staring up at the ceiling lost in either the flood of his thoughts or the loudness of his mind’s emptiness because there was that restlessness and disbelief in how things were slowly starting to change for him - in him: deviating from the routine of melancholia, of longing, of waiting and endless wishing. Sometimes, Jaemin couldn’t sleep because it felt like a dream, and once he woke up, he would return to the same old days of orchestrating his own isolation and he didn’t want that. Sometimes he would run until he can't feel his legs. But there are times where heaviness arrests him and he falls into a gentle slumber because somewhere in his heart, a part of it has been slowly put to ease. 

Evasion is tempting, but Jaemin thinks twice and takes the honest route. “The same old, same old. But I think I'm - it's getting better.”

“So more tea?” Ms. Huang hums. “Note taken.”

He snickers. “Renjun is going to complain again.”

“What a brat. It’s good for his health! Why should he complain?” 

Jaemin laughs and he catches her small smile. He knows that Ms. Huang knows. Perhaps not the entirety of the incident, but a gist of it. Though brazen, she is also gentle in the way she treats Jaemin just the same, adding regularity back to his life, even at the sight of his weary countenance. The nagging, the fondness, the complaints about her son’s silvertongue and her husband who is too lazy to even cook for himself - it is grounding as it is comforting. 

 

As they prepare dinner, she shares stories about Renjun and how, as a child, he collected pennies and would arrange them by the years and by the colours from the bright polish of the new ones to the rusted bronze of the old. Renjun would show them to his parents with the same level of excitement as one would have at a new discovery of the universe. Renjun has not lost even a whit of his curiosity for the world as he continues to age, and Jaemin hopes that that part of him will never change.

The pot of water catches his attention when it begins to boil. He tilts the lid of the pot so that it was half open and turns on the exhaust hoods. He goes to lean his hip against the counter as he watches Ms. Huang cut the chicken, sleeves rolled up to reveal her speckled arms and farmer’s tan. Jaemin glances at his own hands. Cold and dry. He picks at the skin around his fingernails. He looks out the window again and the silvery rain seems to seep into his thoughts. 

“Ms. Huang,” he says and she looks up. “I don’t think I’ve said this often but - thank you. For everything, I mean. You, Renjun, and your husband - I’m grateful for you always welcoming me to your home with open arms, and making your herbal remedies for me to help with my insomnia, and for - taking care of me when I do a bad job of it myself. I really appreciate it. I’m indebted.” 

A stern frown has made its way onto her face. “What do you mean ‘indebted’? There are no debts, you silly boy. What do you take me as? A loan shark?” 

“Wha - no, of course not!” 

Ms. Huang huffs out a small laugh. She shakes her head as she places the sliced chicken in a bin before she washes her hands. “You boys are so foolish. Why is it so hard to accept kindness? We are our own people. We help each other. We do not need to pay each other back. We are a family and you are a part of it. What your own family cannot give to you - we will. Childhood is not about loss.” 

Jaemin blinks. The downpour outside seems to have lightened up. A wave of gratitude rushes inside of him and lingers softly even as she sends him an austere frown that dares him to refute her words. He smiles to himself and turns his attention back to the task at hand and asks, “Want me to peel carrots?”

Ms. Huang sniffs, highly pleased. “Good. Now, if only Renjun can follow your footsteps. The boy’s always too busy to help his own mother with dinner.” 

Jaemin grins. 

He’s on his third carrot when the front door of the shophouse opens and in came the rush of blaring horns in the messy rush hour and the heavy scuttle of rainfall. The door bangs shut, someone grunts and curses and the clatter of fallen objects echoes past the walls. Jaemin glances up at Ms. Huang who reciprocates the eye contact. She sighs and rolls her eyes skyward and juts her chin to the direction of the front door. Jaemin smiles at the cue, setting the carrot and peeler down onto the counter. 

He heads past the main hall and around the partition, finding Renjun drenched from head to toe with a broken umbrella in hand. He’s picking up the fallen antique scissors laced in gold while his backpack simultaneously knocks over an enamel teapot that luckily does not break.

“Wow,” Jaemin comments. “You’re like a bull in a china shop.”

“ _Very_ funny.” Renjun stomps on the doormat. He shoves the broken umbrella into the bucket at the front where they kept them and picks up the enamel teapot successfully without knocking something else over. “I am never trusting the weather forecast ever again. It said it was going to be sunny but no, it rains. It _rains._ And it is at this perfect time that my umbrella chooses to break and screw me over.” 

“I can tell. You’re looking utterly spiffy.”

“Fuck off with that sarcasm.” Renjun glares at him but his wet hair sticking to his puckered forehead makes him look more like an angry kitten. Then again, Jaemin has seen his wrath to understand that Renjun’s appearance has no direct correlation to how terrifying he truly is. “What are you guys even doing? The shop closed early today.”

“Your mom said she doesn’t want to waste her time keeping the shop open when the rain is driving customers away. So,” Jaemin beams, “we’re making soup and preparing dinner. And making your favourite herbal tea.” 

Renjun leers at him, disgruntled. “Seriously? Again? I don’t know if I should be concerned that you’re getting way too chummy with my own mom.”

Jaemin sticks his tongue out. Renjun rolls his eyes and drags wet streak marks across the floor as he heads around the partition, and Jaemin winces when Ms. Huang yells at Renjun for dirtying the floor. Renjun bites back that she’s going to have to deal with it until he’s changed and cleaned up. Before Renjun heads up the stairs, he glances back at Jaemin again, donning a thoughtful look. “Hey. You look better.”

Jaemin asks, “Did you just compliment my face?”

Renjun swipes his wet sleeve at him and Jaemin shrieks when droplets of rain gets onto his face. “No, dumbass. I’m saying that you look a little less tired than usual.”

“I know, I know. Although it is nice to know that you do pay attention to how I look.” Jaemin gives him a subtle wink before he throws his hands over his head when Renjun makes a motion of holding his fist up. Laughing quietly, Jaemin brings his hands back down after the clear bluff, and he pulls his sleeves down to cover his fingernails. “But yeah. I feel better, too, thanks to you.”

“Why’re you thanking me?” 

“Because you helped.”

“I didn’t do much. It’s all you, Jaemin.” Renjun gives a shrug. He keeps his gaze averted and his fingers curl at his side. “I just want you to be happy and I want _you_ to be the reason, you know? I - we all do.” 

Jaemin blinks and watches Renjun head up the stairs after a tentative silence and an awkward smile. He is overcome with delicate warmth swathing him like a blanket taken right out of the dryer - the certain kind of unique warmth and lightness Renjun can only make him feel. He doesn’t know what to make of his quiet tempo of his heartbeat quickening in pace. When Jaemin returns to the kitchen, there is a wary smile surfacing on Ms. Huang’s lips as she shifts her knowing gaze back down onto the cutting board. 

Jaemin wonders if he isn’t as opaque as he thought he was. Maybe he’s just as see-through and transparent as the other wearers of hearts on their sleeves. He wonders what else Ms. Huang knows. 

ix.

 

The wind has lost its bite and the mild scent of evergreens and spruces lingers in the air when the bare carapace of winter begins to fade into a parade of spring. It’s still cold, though. Jaemin continues to wear the wool scarf and pretends Renjun’s warm presence is with him as he starts his weekend off with apologies.

He considers going to the convenience store to grab those strawberry lollipops Donghyuck so often eats, but he thinks twice of it. He recognizes that it’s always been a private sentiment Donghyuck and Mark shared and he didn’t want to impose despite his good intentions. So, he settles for decaf coffee that garners a dubious look from Yuta when he hands it over the counter. Jaemin can only reciprocate the same look. Decaf is for demons. 

As for Jeno, he buys a box of white chocolate cookies in the shape of a cat and tucks it underneath his arm. Jaemin isn’t sure how Jeno will feel about eating something in the shape of an animal he vehemently adores despite his allergies, but at least it’s cute, and Jeno likes cute things. And for Mark, Jaemin ends up getting him a tiny party hat for Peppermint from an overly-expensive stationery store. 

Jaemin holds the coffee with both hands, letting it warm his palms until he has to alternate between the two to avoid the scalding despite the cardboard sleeve. He makes his way down to Donghyuck’s cottage, watching as cars drive by in a gaussian blur and neighbors stroll by with trinkets of their daily lives. He sees old ladies in bright neon leggings and visors covering half of their faces chatting animatedly amongst each other as they jog past him, while noisy kids in their bicycles with training wheels race down the sidewalk.

Once the crowded houses seated next to each has dwindled into open corn fields and tall grass, he spots the quaint cottage cocooned in budding blossoms. With tentative steps, he approaches the entrance lined with hedges that are growing green again, and when he stops at the door, his nerves begin to spike. 

Steeling himself, he rings the doorbell. Jaemin counts the pebbles scattered across the pathway and comes to a number of twenty-five when the door finally opens. He looks up to find Donghyuck staring at him with eyes wide. What he doesn’t expect afterwards is for Mark to pop up from behind and throw his arms around Donghyuck’s waist like a little harmless mole, resting his chin on top of Donghyuck’s shoulder while he lights up at the sight of Jaemin.

“Hey!” Mark exclaims and does a little excited hop in place, seemingly oblivious to the tension in the atmosphere. “It’s been a while, man. I didn’t know you were coming over. I mean, Hyuck didn’t really say anything, but he’s the kind to omit certain facts and call it selective truths.” 

“Shut your ass up, booger brain,” Donghyuck complains, turning around to aim a low kick to Mark’s shin that was easily dodged. “And I didn’t invite him over.” 

“Oh, what? You didn’t?” 

“Yeah, he didn’t.” Jaemin sheepishly laughs. “I came to talk to you guys, actually. Sorry for showing up unannounced. I - uh, heard from Renjun you guys were hanging out this weekend. Thought it’d be the best time since I’ve been absent from school.” He sends a hesitant look towards Donghyuck’s way. 

When the silence extends beyond a minute that would constitute as an awkward silence, Mark does a poor job of discreetly jabbing an elbow in Donghyuck's side that makes him spring into an unruly response.

“ _Ow_ \- ugh. Whatever, it’s fine. Let’s talk inside,” Donghyuck grumbles and waves Jaemin in as he turns around. 

Jaemin smiles and follows after him, toeing off his shoes. In the living room, Jaemin places the items down on the small coffee table, and sits down on the carpeted floor. Mark settles across from him while Donghyuck leaves to get Jeno from upstairs, and his yell projected upwards could be heard through the walls, “Hey, Jeno! Come down and guess who’s here!”

“Is it the love of my life: the pizza delivery man?” 

There’s the pitter patter of footsteps descending down the stairs, and as the both of them enter the living room, Jeno spots Jaemin sitting by the table and the happy glow on his face warps into confusion. “Jaemin?”

Jaemin waves. Jeno exchanges a glance with Donghyuck before they shuffle to the coffee table and takes a seat across from Jaemin. Donghyuck was twisting the sleeves of his sweater while Jeno was quietly looking over at Jaemin, undoubtedly gauging his appearance and the level of weariness conspicuous through his countenance. Mark looked like he was caught in between a crossfire, uncertainty written all over his expression, but focuses on gleefully examining the tiny party hat for Peppermint. Jaemin burrows his face deeper into the scarf. 

Jaemin thinks over his words, but he’s thinking too much again, and he reminds himself that he merely has to be direct. He sits up and gently slides the peace offerings over to them before withdrawing his hands, gathering strength through an intake of breath. “I’m - here to say I’m sorry.”

The three of them stare at him. They don’t say anything until Mark voices his confusion. “Wait. Am I supposed to be upset? Why would I be upset? I don’t recall you doing anything to upset me. I’m lost.” 

Donghyuck sighs into his hands. Jeno looks rather pensive as he ignores Mark and asks, “What for?”

Jaemin bites the inside of his cheek. Their gazes are piercing. His heart may not be made of iron, merely of blood and bone fragments stuck in it like splinters, but Jaemin tries to be a better version of himself anyways. He musters up the courage he has left and holds it out for the world to see in his wavering voice.

“For a lot of things, really. For snapping at you, Donghyuck, but for also being a bad friend in general to you guys. I know I’ve always been reclusive and that it would frustrate and concern you. Especially this time. It’s - I’ve been dealing with some baggage, lately, that I haven’t had the strength to face until - well, now, and I didn’t want to burden anyone. But I know it's not an excuse either to just suddenly act so distant and cold. The least I can do is explain and reason I’ve been so absent lately is because of my - “ he stops when it feels as though there was a blockage in his throat. Jaemin swallows. “My - uh. My - okay, it’s a long story but my - “

“Jaemin,” Jeno interrupts him softly and Jaemin immediately shuts his mouth. Jeno is smiling with both his mouth and eyes. “It’s okay. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.” 

Guilt swathes him from head to toe. He clenches his hands underneath the table. “No, I want to tell you guys. I want to tell you guys but I just - I don’t know. It’s a lot harder than I imagined it to be.”

“It’s okay that you’re not ready to talk about it. One day you will be, you know? But in the meantime, go easy on yourself. There’s no rush.” 

Jaemin looks at Jeno gratefully before he shifts his focus on Donghyuck, who continues to remain quiet. Donghyuck stares at Jaemin with a look of contemplation, his eyes refracting the faint halo of the sunlight streaming through the windows, until he finally acknowledges the cup of coffee when he wraps a hand around it. “Are you okay?” 

Jaemin blinks at the unexpected response. He glances at Mark and catches a light of understanding in his eyes - the same understanding he sees in Donghyuck that lifts the anvil from his chest. “Yeah. I think I’ll be okay.”

“Good.” Donghyuck nods. “Then it’s fine.” 

Jaemin blinks. He alternates his gaze between the three of them. “What? Really? Just like that? No grudges?” 

“You say that as though I’m always a spiteful person when I’m, in fact, a ray of fucking sunshine. And you know what? I _am_ still a little annoyed and could spend all day talking about how much of an ass you were being, but people got shit going on in their lives and the least we can do is to be kind to one another to make it less shit. You’re my friend, Jaemin, and even though we’re friends, you’re not obligated to tell me anything you’re not comfortable with. Simple as that.” Donghyuck brings the cup of coffee close and squints at the lid. “Plus, _you_ of all people voluntarily bought me decaf coffee. Nevermind that it’s lukewarm now, but pair that with the fact that I’ve missed your stupid face? I’ve gone soft.”

“Is it even coffee when it’s decaf?” Jeno pulls a confused face.

“Hey, don’t gang up on me! This is _my_ house.”

Jeno sticks his tongue out at him before grinning at Jaemin, holding up the box of cookies. “Well, you’ve already won my heart back with these. And hey. Thanks for being honest even if it’s just being honest about how you’re not ready to explain your situation yet. We appreciate it. Just keep in mind that we’ll be here ready to listen when you’re ready to tell us.”

“But you guys are my friends.” Jaemin bites his lip. “Not my therapist. I don’t want to be a burden.” 

Donghyuck slants Mark a glance who’s been uncharacteriscally silent. Mark was donning a contemplative expression, his mouth open as though he was about to say something, but hesitation overcomes him and a croak ends up leaving his throat. Donghyuck nudges him gently in the side, coaxing him to continue. With a sigh, Mark leans forward on the table, tapping his fingers against the wood in an oscillation. 

“Um. Like you said - we _are_ your friends, and friends share burdens. It’s tiring carrying everything on your shoulders all alone, isn’t it? And there’s nothing wrong with seeing a therapist either. Just - you know, to put it out there - my mom’s been going to therapy for a while now and also attends this support group thingy for people who’ve been in a similar situation as her. It’s helped her a ton. I think she’s - definitely a lot happier now.” Mark pauses, a gentle smile gradually forming on his face. Jaemin glances over at Donghyuck, and he looks proud. “I'm still learning about the whole thing. Maybe I'll go with her to a session one day. Who knows? But it’s not bad or weak, you know, to want to get better.” 

Jaemin blinks. He's never heard Mark talk about his mother before. Jaemin has seen her once at Mark’s graduation, but never has Mark expanded on what kind of person his mother is. He’s only ever talked fondly about his grandpa. 

The last time he was at the doctor's for something other than the common cold was when he was twelve. All he remembers is a grey sky as he left the clinic with his father, who shamelessly proclaimed to the adjacent public that Jaemin was too young for sleeping medication. Jaemin was hot with shame from all the attention his father had garnered from the townsfolk that were known to talk. At that moment, Jaemin had never wanted to grow up fast so badly so he could pretend that nothing was wrong with him. 

The matter was never touched upon again. Jaemin always had trouble picturing himself in that kind of position, because if it meant being a burden, it would mean he’d be unwanted too. His father had already been a ghostly figure in his life and Jaemin didn’t want that. Now, to hear the underlying quiver and fragility in Mark's voice as he talked about his mother, meant that the wound was still fresh. But it put forth the possibility that anyone can grasp at the courage to speak about the things that once seemed unimaginable to ever form at the tip of the tongue, and to seek your own definition of closure when you are not given one. 

And when Jaemin thinks about it, he has never let himself stop feeling like a burden to others for the longest time that he’s never learned the art of relying on others. But friendship was a two-way street. His strength wasn’t measured by the burdens he carried alone or by his silent struggles. It was measured in the joys he shared with others and recognizing his need for help and friendship and seeking it. It was being carved into a kinder creature from absorbing loss. 

Jaemin reminisces the times he’s laughed without his mother in his life. He thinks about the moments where genuine happiness has rushed through him whenever he witnessed Mark create a war in the kitchen or when Renjun wrestled Donghyuck for dibs on the window seat of the diner, or when Jeno cheerfully prompted all of their quarrels for self-entertainment, or when Jisung dodged all his attempts in showing affection. Even Chenle, despite Jaemin’s unease around him, gives him hope that the younger boy’s effortless bright spirits was something Jaemin could achieve one day. Jaemin feels - no, _is_ the happiest and the simplest when he is with them. 

And though Jaemin can’t see it within himself yet to talk to someone of a higher profession, he keeps the option close to his heart. 

“Thank you,” Jaemin rushes out, his barbed heart overflowing with warmth and gratitude and love. He doesn’t know how else to convey it. “I - just, thank you. I really mean it. Seriously. Like, a whole ton. _Seriously_.” 

“Okay, now you just sound like Mark,” Donghyuck quips, earning a half-hearted slap to the arm from Mark. 

“This calls for a _group_ hug!” Jeno sings as he beckons everyone to stand up before huddling them into a tight hug. Mark is laughing in Jaemin’s ear as Donghyuck tries to kiss him, before moving onto Jeno who screeches in exasperation and ducks, while Jaemin graciously accepts the kiss to the cheek. In the back of his mind, he wishes that Renjun was there with them too, instead of preparing for the day he’d leave town. But he pretends again, that Renjun is there with him in the form of his scarf’s warmth. 

Once they all remove themselves from the group hug, Jeno reaches over and pinches Jaemin’s ear with crinkling eyes. “You’re such a dummy, but I guess that makes you _our_ dummy.”

“ _And_ I’m done.” Donghyuck gags. He puts his arms akimbo and asks, “Now that we’ve finally got that over with, wanna stay over and kick Mark’s ass in the new Super Smash Bros game?” 

Mark protests and Jeno laughs. Jaemin breaks into a grin. Weekends are no longer lonely. “You bet I’m in.” 

viii.

Jaemin watches the warm specks of the rising sun loom over the clearing sky. Another sleepless night. The ghost is fading but it never fades completely. Jaemin isn’t sure why. But he thinks that things are slowly beginning to change and he goes to bed with a lighter heart as he tries to remind himself that he no longer has to wait for his father to come home, because his father always does.

There are newspapers scattered across the dinner table with red ink marked around property listings. Jaemin fixes himself a simple breakfast to eat and packs a sandwich for lunch. When Jaemin returns to school after three weeks of absences, Jeno hands him a binder full of notes that he’s missed, topping it off with a charming smile. Jaemin takes one look inside and subsequently wants to throw himself out the window. 

“It’s okay,” Jeno pats him on the back while Jaemin groans into his desk. “If anything, you can just bullshit on tests. That’s what I do and I still do pretty sweet.” 

There was an obvious flaw in Jeno’s logic because Jeno was the type to score the highest score in class without studying at all, while Jaemin was the opposite. He figures that taking extra trips to the school’s tutor club was worth the time if it meant passing and graduating. Too bad Renjun is in the tutor club too, and that means dealing with Jaemin for another extra two hours of his life. 

As Jaemin moves from class to class, from classmate to classmate - his head clears like mist lifting from the boglands. His classmates show concern that is so shallow that he can see their ulterior motives beneath the flimsy surface; where now, their familiar and doll-like smiles have morphed into a flickering flame trying to be put out by the wind but was all mixed together into a palette of colours you can only in the dirt of the earth. Jaemin can only smile out of politeness, but he’s never noticed how their empty talk has carved a deeper, hollow cavity into his heart. 

All this time, Jaemin has been folding himself over like a paper airplane for others to use and colouring inside their lines in a desperate attempt for someone to find him good enough to stay when everyone he loves would leave him behind. But Jaemin was in the wrong too. He was so blinded by his own self-pity and his desperation to replace the emptiness left behind by his mother that he failed to realize how it was already absurd in itself to _ever_ expect anyone to stay. Creatures such as them, such as human beings, were made to live - to wander, to get lost, to search and discover and grow - not to stay stagnant in one place. 

And it is far greater and far braver to live an honest life than a shallow one. 

“People only hear what they want to hear,” Renjun once said to him. “You don’t need their approval. You don’t need them to tell you your worth. So why explain yourself? They were never your friends in the first place.” 

So, Jaemin says no. He says no to the prop work for a club who never needed him, to the note taking for the girl who never comes to class, to the constant supply of favours wormed beneath a facade of disingenuous concern. They can whisper and dispense lies into the rumour hill about him. They can continue to think he is a people pleaser. A suck-up. A kiss-ass. A phony. He can let all the misconceptions of his character and integrity broil into something so skewed and so untrue, but Jaemin will never find the need to explain himself to people who simply won’t get it - who will only want to understand from their insular level of perception and not beyond. 

To place his heart in his own hands rather than the hands of others is more freeing than he could ever imagine - more freeing than the spring sea sky and the blooming flowers. He never knew how scary it could be to want to change, to be in the process of changing, but no learning curve is a horizontal line. 

And maybe, just maybe, Jaemin was no longer caged and bounded to this town by unreachable dreams. 

“I will now seize the opportunity to say I told you so.” Renjun dumps his backpack down onto the floor and takes a seat beside Jaemin when he finds him underneath the bleachers, wearing a triumph smile and taking on a haughty tone. “I told you so.”

“You are the pinnacle of maturity.” Jaemin wrinkles his nose at Renjun’s boost in ego. Yawning, he shuts his history textbook he’s been trying to skim through during his free block, hoping to pick up on any important information but ultimately to no avail. All he picked up was an urge for a nap. “What’re you even doing here? Are you skipping again?”

“I’m not skipping. I was excused ‘cause I’ve got a dentist’s appointment. I have to wait for my mom to get me.” Renjun frowns at him before slanting a narrow glance up at the underside of the bleachers. “The dust bunnies must have missed you. What’s so appealing about being under the bleachers, anyways?” He points up at one of the many vandalized spots of the structure and the motley of chewing gum stuck onto the surface. “Why would you wanna sit in a place with ‘deez nuts’ written in fine sharpie print?” 

“You know me.” Jaemin laughs, shrugging as he looks at the thin beams of light spilling through the gaps of the bleachers and onto the floor, creating reminiscents of sunspots in the flimsy dark. “It’s nothing special.” 

Renjun doesn't answer. Jaemin glances over at him, finding Renjun staring off into space, before he returns from his woolgathering head and clears his throat. “Guess this is me sitting beside you in the dark in a literal sense, then.”

“Yeah,” he whispers. Jaemin studies Renjun’s profile, the way shadows fall over his face and carves silhouettes into his features. He glances down at Renjun’s hands and notices the flecks of orange and coral paint dried over his skin that makes Jaemin wonder if absorbing all the colour blots when Renjun paints will make his soul a little bit more brighter and his heart a little bit more awake. “Hey, Renjun. What did you do with the skates?”

“Will you be volunteering today?” Renjun asks instead of answering, and Jaemin frowns. 

“Um. Yeah?”

“Well, there you go. That’s your answer.” 

Nonplussed, Jaemin watches Renjun drag himself out from underneath the bleachers, dusting off his pants as he stands up. “What? What does that mean?”

“You’ll see.” Renjun smiles with a fair bit of mischief as he scoops up his backpack and throws it around his shoulder. “Anyways, my mom should be here by now. See you later.”

Jaemin frowns as Renjun leaves behind a riddle for him to solve. For someone so straightforward, Renjun can be so ironically cryptic at times. Jaemin sighs and brings his textbook up to his face, repeatedly tapping it on his forehead in an attempt to study by osmosis. His brain is still empty by the time school ends. 

 

 

“Look what the cat dragged in,” Satara beams when Jaemin demurely enters the thrift shop, hands on her hips from behind the counter. She was wearing a red scarf with pink camellias today. He stops by the counter, letting Satara pull him into a light hug before she withdraws and takes him by the shoulders, inspecting him from head to toe. “Well, thank the Lord you look physically intact. But are you sure you are well enough to do work today? I don’t mind if you take a few more extra days off.”

“I’m sure.” Jaemin nods, rubbing the back of his nape sheepishly. “Thank you for being lenient on me. I’m sorry again for worrying you.” 

“Oh, it’s fine. I understand.” She waves away the apology. “While you were gone, a new volunteer did all the heavy labour for us old ladies who are too feeble to do it ourselves.”

“I think you look wonderfully youthful,” Jaemin comments, laughing when Satara sends him a disapproving glance but a pleased smile that contradicts it. 

“Back with the flattery, aren’t you? Can’t say I didn’t miss it. Anyways, why don’t you stay in the back and go easy for today? If I see you pushing yourself, I can and _will_ send you home with an arm full of salonpas. Go ahead now.” 

When she sends him off to the backroom, the rest of the old volunteers greet him warmly, coming over to hug him and ask him whether he’s eaten or not, leaving him warm and cozy but a little diffident from all the attention. Jaemin grabs his apron, putting it on before meeting the new volunteer who was slightly taller and older than him by the name of Jungwoo, whose character was a bit on the quirky side - soft-spoken but whimsical. Jaemin finds that both their sense of humor were similar in respect towards their execution, and Jaemin takes an immediate fondness to the older. 

They spent the first hour organizing clothes and pricing them. As soon as they move onto the objects, Jungwoo lights up with recognition as though he’s just remembered something.

“Oh, thanks for donating those skates, by the way,” Jungwoo says as he prices the new batch of secondhand curios, and Jaemin stops in his tracks. “Your artist friend did a really nice paint job on them. A few customers came by to ask about them, actually.” 

“What?” Jaemin asks, quizzical. 

Jungwoo slants him a curious glance. “You don’t know? He brought them in a few days ago. He was a little bit shorter than you with the whole severe look going on but like, with a really cute smile. You probably missed the skates since it’s on the Item of the Month wall. A real _objet d'art_.” He gives a rendition of jazz hands with a straight face to embellish the term. 

Jaemin stares at him, lost, before he turns around and leaves the backroom, heading towards the wall. He notices that the window displays have changed and particular layouts of categories have switched in order to accommodate new donations, yet what was the most striking in the entirety of the shop was the centerpiece adorned upon the spotlighted wall, enclosed by a glass case and hidden by adjacent shelves that divided the aisles. Jaemin stands in front of it, looking up at the skates that were painted over with varying shades of orange and pink, and feathery touches of white to mimic contrails - a reminiscent of a sunset. An eternal orange sky. 

To see Renjun make the very thing that made him unhappy into something beautiful left Jaemin warm and quiet all over. Only Renjun can make him feel this way. He doesn't know what to do with all this _feeling_.

“Jaemin?” He hears Satara call him. She’s standing beside him. Jaemin turns, still in a daze, before he unties the knot behind his back.

“Sorry,” he says, handing the apron over to her to hold. “I’ll be right back.” 

Jaemin doesn’t hear her response when he runs out of the thrift shop. And he doesn’t stop running. He runs until he’s passing familiar buildings and long trails of trees, until he slows down when the shophouse comes into view and he spots Ms. Huang scolding Renjun, who remains indifferent as she was unlocking the front doors. His chest is scorching from running the entire distance. 

Jaemin briskly approaches them. His presence goes unnoticed until Renjun glances up and does a double-take at his sudden appearance.

“Jaemin? What are you doing here?” Renjun asks, nonplussed, and his eyes widen when Jaemin doesn’t stop walking until he’s wrapping his arms around Renjun’s shoulders and hugging him close, making Renjun stumble back a few steps. Jaemin squeezes his eyes shut and buries his face into the crook of Renjun’s neck, hoping that the magnitude of all his inexplicable feelings will be conveyed through his touch. Even though Renjun is so close to him, he still feels so far.

But after a moment of hesitation, when Renjun holds him back, the world seems to melt. 

“Hey,” Renjun whispers, his break tickling his ear. “Is everything okay?”

Jaemin opens his eyes. Ms. Huang has left to enter the shophouse already. The sky is still warm and the world is still spinning and his heart is still beating. “Yeah. Everything is okay.”

 

 

 

Jaemin lies in bed and picks up the paperweight. Jaemin wishes he can share with Renjun the lightness he feels in his chest, and the warmth that embraces him, when he is around Renjun. Perhaps that would be better than using words.

Jaemin holds the paperweight up to the ceiling with its blue flowers and orange sky gleaming in the heart of the crystal, leading the quiet procession of his heartbeat. He whispers to it, to the stars that can’t hear him, to the vestigial ghost that listens, to somewhere far away and impermanent: “Thank you.” 

vii.

 

It’s become a custom to freeload over at Donghyuck’s cottage over breaks and whenever the occasion rises. Nevermind the awkward silences whenever Donghyuck gets into arguments with his mother, clashing heads with the same stubbornness, but Jaemin thinks that Ms. Lee was generally a nice lady and a magnificent cook. They’d always share recipes whenever they crossed paths, and that earned Jaemin some brownie points and extra knowledge in the arts of homely cooking. Donghyuck finds it strange how he was able to connect with middle-aged women, but Jaemin writes it off as the result of his impeccable charm. 

During spring break, they celebrate Renjun’s birthday by having a gaming marathon at Donghyuck's place before heading to Renjun's shophouse for a big home-cooked dinner, considering Renjun didn’t like the embellishment of birthdays and preferred the day to be intimate and simple. Renjun also placed a spectacular emphasis on his dislike for presents as well, which Jaemin had learned through a well-put together PowerPoint presentation as presented by Renjun himself so that everyone got the point. It was weird. Jaemin supposes that it was Renjun’s one of many extraordinary ways of being. 

As they're setting up their gaming consoles, Jisung barges in at one point, frantically fixing his gelled hair. “Hey, hey. Do I look okay?”

“No, you look ugly,” Donghyuck says.

“Oh my god,” Jaemin squeals, clutching his chest. “You look so _cute_. Come here, let me pinch your cheeks.” 

Jeno sniffs. “You look like a chipmunk. A nice-looking one, I mean.” 

“You have a big forehead,” Renjun says flatly.

“Looking snazzy there!” Mark cheers with great enthusiasm. “What’s the occasion? Going on a date?”

Jisung turns slightly red and denies the implication. “I’m just hanging out with Chenle. We made plans beforehand to go watch the new Spiderman movie. Ah, happy birthday too, Renjun. Jesus - stop looking at me like that!” He rushes out of Donghyuck’s room in a fit of embarrassment. 

As soon as he leaves, Donghyuck turns around to face them. “Totally for a date.”

After hours of gaming and squabbling, Mark throws the controller down and falls onto his back, agonizing over his loss as Donghyuck springs from the floor and loudly initiates a victory dance, moonwalking and spinning around as capably dramatical. Jeno was too occupied with stuffing himself with pizza to care while Renjun was busy watching conspiracy theories on his phone. Jaemin, on the other hand, intervenes as a peacemaker when Mark tackles Donghyuck’s legs as revenge for goading him as a sore loser and the both of them go down. Jaemin does the bare minimum of trying to break them apart but settles on watching them out of amusement instead.

“You're gonna knock something over,” Renjun plainly says. 

“No we’re not,” Donghyuck says at the same time Mark shoves him away, making Donghyuck roll off and over until he collides with his bookshelf, making a few books already sticking out fall and hit him right flat on the face. “Ow.”

“I _told_ you.’

Donghyuck moves the books aside as he petulantly rubs his forehead. “Listen, birthday boy. Just ‘cause you’re gonna work for NASA one day doesn’t mean you get to be such a know-it-all dick. I already deal enough of that with Mark and his crushes on old ass authors who wrote old ass literature.” 

“They’re not old,” Mark gasps, affronted. “They’re _timeless_!”

“They’re dead white men buried six feet under the ground!”

“I think he’s just jealous that you love your old white men more than your own boyfriend,” Renjun teases as he pulls at Mark’s ear. Mark swats his hand away, growing flustered as his mouth snaps open and closed like a fish on the brink of death. 

“I mean, if _my_ boyfriend paid more attention to old white men than me, I’d be pretty annoyed too. Just saying,” Jaemin pipes up and high-fives Donghyuck who held up his hand with an approving nod. 

“It’s okay, Mark.” Jeno pats Mark on the back in consolidation. “I respect your preferences. No judgement here.”

Mark sputters with his entire face burning hot with red. “Shut the - it’s a _different_ kind of love!” 

They all cackle at him. Jaemin hopes that they never change. 

When the sun starts to set, they head out to the shophouse. Ms. Huang ended up making a feast, a variety of dishes splayed across the dinner table downstairs from steamed fish with scallions and onions to roasted duck to stir fried prawns. Ms. Huang looks highly pleased with herself. The food was warm and delicious and Jaemin doesn’t think he’s ever seen the others eat so fast before to the point of fighting for the last portion, but he watches on quietly and fondly, wanting to capture this happy moment. 

When Ms. Huang brings the fruit cake out afterwards, they all wish Renjun a happy birthday in a horrible chorus of voices. Jaemin watches Renjun burst into laughter when Mark drops a strawberry but quickly eats it from the floor, earning himself a collective reaction of disgust and disbelief. 

This is the last birthday Renjun will spend in this town before he’s gone. Before everyone is gone. Before Jaemin is gone, too. And even though Jaemin has come to accept that no one is permanent, that no one can stay in one place forever - Jaemin will still miss this. He’ll miss the birthday dinners, the constant bickering, the happiness that Jaemin feels when he is with them. He’ll miss the sound of Renjun’s ripply laughter and his mellow voice that makes Jaemin feel at home.

“You think too much,” Renjun pulls him back down from the clouds, a wide smile on his face that made his eyes crinkle. 

Jaemin reciprocates the smile, swiping cream off of the cake with a finger and smearing it over Renjun’s cheek, prompting everyone else to do the same. Renjun curses at all of them. The night seems to extend beyond eternity but time does not wait. After all of them have cleaned up after themselves and helped with clearing the dinner table, Donghyuck lies down on the floor and complains about being extremely full to the point of nausea, while Mark was downing water like his life depended on it. Jeno was falling asleep from having eaten too much and Jaemin was getting jittery.

Renjun takes one look at them and says, “All of you are a fucking mess.” 

Jeno burps. “Love you too.” 

Donghyuck grumbles, “Love you thrice.”

“Thrice? _Thrice_?” Mark furrows his brows. “Hyuck, your grammar is appalling.” 

By the time it’s almost midnight, they all head out except for Jaemin. He waits for the others to leave first, with Mark driving Donghyuck and Jeno home, and after they exchange farewells before Renjun watches them leave safely from the back, he turns to Jaemin and offers, “I’ll walk you out to the front.” 

“Yeah,” Jaemin replies, grabbing his bag. “Okay.” 

The stars look like sugar spilled over black marble. Jaemin finds that it was like a song for the eyes, and beyond the sky sculpted by divine hands, laid the galaxies tumbling and darting. No wonder Renjun has such an affinity and fascination for space. It is spontaneous and unpredictable just like Renjun’s soul. Maybe Renjun is born from the stars, made of stardust like all corporeal creatures, but Jaemin wonders why his own skin often feels like dirt. 

He watches their breaths skate into the sky in white. It floats in the air before dispersing into nothing. Renjun hunches up his shoulders in his thick knitted cardigan, the tips of his ears becoming red from the cold. Jaemin forgot to wear the wool scarf today. 

When Jaemin still doesn’t budge from the doorway, Renjun speaks up, “You looked distracted today.” 

Jaemin glances over at him. Smiling, he tightens his grip on his bag before he slips it off his shoulder and rummages inside. He hears the crumpling of paper as he takes out the messily wrapped item out of his bag. He can see the protest sitting at the tip of Renjun’s tongue as his eyes widen, but Jaemin beats him to it when he hands the present over and says, “Happy birthday, Renjun.”

“Oh, you sneaky asshole. What’d I say about gifts?” 

“No takesies backsies.” Jaemin says in a sing-song voice. “Open it first.”

Renjun sighs, shaking his head as he tears the paper apart. “You’re shit at gift-wrapping.”

Jaemin laughs. Renjun tucks the ripped paper underneath his arm before he opens the plain box. Once he looks inside, Renjun stills and stares at the present. Jaemin’s hands are sweaty. His heart is galloping in his ears. Renjun glances up at him, his expression unreadable but his voice tender. “It’s beautiful.”

“Yeah, it is, isn’t it? The sky and the flowers.” Jaemin takes a step back and rubs the back of his neck. “It’s a paperweight. I thought maybe you can take it with you when you leave, kinda like a memorabilia. Thought you’d have a bunch of papers flying around too by the time you start school again. And… and I - Renjun, even if you’re not here to stay, I’m happy the universe allowed your soul to stop by anyways. I’m happy that I was able to meet you out of all the billions of people in this planet in this one town. So - yeah. Happy birthday.” 

Renjun stares at him and inhales a deep breath before blowing out slowly. He picks the paperweight up and studies the delicate blue flowers that shift between the chatoyant angles before his eyes in the limelight. Jaemin observes the taciturn colour of his eyes and the gentle tilt of his brows. When Renjun finally looks up at Jaemin, there is only a hint of inscrutability and a certain kind of sadness in his expression that leaves Jaemin baffled. “It’s too early for a goodbye gift, isn’t it?”

Jaemin doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t understand Renjun’s reaction. He shrugs, looking down at the ground with a nervous laughs. “You know me.”

“No, I don’t.” Renjun smiles, wistful. “I don’t think I ever have.”

“What does that - “

“And I still don’t because _you,_ ” Renjun continues as he places the paperweight carefully back into the box, closing it with the lid, “are a conundrum. Everytime I try to prepare myself for something unpredictable, you always manage to surprise me. You always do something that makes me gets my hopes up. And I don’t get you, Jaemin. I don’t understand what you want.” 

Renjun stands there, the box in his hands, as he looks at Jaemin in contemplation - in agitation, even, from the severity of his expression, but it almost looks as though he was waiting for something too. For what - Jaemin doesn’t know. Jaemin doesn’t know anything. Jaemin never knows when it comes to Renjun. And he doesn’t know why Renjun lets out a quiet sigh and whispers to him the exact same thing Jaemin has always been harbouring close to his heart that ached for a splash of the sun: “You’ve always been a little bit too unreachable to me, Jaemin. Always so far away.”

The thoughts in his head and the confusion in his washing machine heart is left jumbled and tangled, and Jaemin takes a step back. And another step, until Renjun is becoming smaller and smaller from his sight. Renjun is watching him leave. He doesn’t know if he’s still watching when Jaemin turns around.

And underneath the flickering street lamps, Jaemin runs away from the thing he fears instead of running towards the person he hopes for.


	4. the dog days are over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> calloused

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i probably should have shared this earlier but this [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qooWnw5rEcIsong) by mitski really reminds me of jaemin in the beginning of this fic !!

Time is so much like water. It can pass slowly, a drop at a time, even freeze, or rush by in a blink of an eye. Jaemin feels as though he’s lived a dozen of lives already in the span of twenty-two hours. 

It’s one in the morning. Thinking about useless trivia facts and reading florid material on topics he’s apathetic about doesn't help him fall asleep. He watches memories unwind across the ceiling in the blotchy darkness instead, like the reeling of a filmstrip flashing before his eyes.

Jaemin sees bits and pieces of his quiet conversations with Renjun during their late night talks, and leisure ones when they walk together to the bus stop and take the bus together. They either talk a lot or they don’t talk at all. Sometimes he doesn’t remember what they talked about but Jaemin would remember how it felt. Renjun’s silence is like the way the days gives way to night: comforting. Undemanding. His voice sticks in his head and Jaemin wonders when Renjun had become such an important figure in his life, from strangers to lukewarm acquaintances to more than friends but less than lovers. 

The ceiling becomes a blank slate again for figmented constellations. Jaemin wishes he can hear Renjun’s thoughts through a paper cup phone. But it only brings him back to the very idea that stumps him: Renjun called Jaemin unreachable. But Jaemin doesn’t get it. _Jaemin_ is the one who is supposed to be longing to reach; Jaemin isn’t supposed to be unreachable in the eyes of others - in the eyes of _Renjun_. Jaemin doesn’t understand how he himself is unreachable when Renjun is the most out of reach of all. But Renjun has always known Jaemin better than Jaemin knows himself. 

Jaemin brings his arm over his eyes. All these years of trying to solve Renjun, only to have another mystery planted right in front of him, leaves him lost and unsure where to go. 

But he supposes that Renjun has always been the quiet confusion of his heart.

vi.

Everyone else is starting to pick up on the sudden rift in their relationship. Jaemin doesn’t talk to Renjun for a few days, although he does see him linger around in the hallways, poised in the way he carries himself. It reminds Jaemin to not drag his feet. The gait of someone is a clear giveaway to what kind of person they are. Jaemin still thinks he doesn’t know what kind of person Renjun is.

“Is everything okay?” Jeno asks as they’re heading to class together. Jaemin yawns into his hand, his eyes stinging from the lack of sleep. He needs more chamomile tea. “You and Renjun have been acting weird. Like, you’re all jumpy around one another, you guys don’t even talk, and Renjun doesn’t even stay for lunch anymore. He always says he’s busy. Busy with _what_?” 

Jaemin shrugs. “Graduation responsibilities?” 

“You’re forgetting that I’m graduating too and even _I_ don’t have that much shit to do.” 

“Well, he’s smart and smart people always have something to do - _ow_. Rude,” Jaemin hisses and rubs his ear with a pout after Jeno playfully yanks at it. “But seriously, nothing’s wrong. It’s always been like this with me and him.” 

“I’ve been third wheeling your asses since the ninth grade, Jaemin. I can tell when something’s up.”

Jaemin bites his lip and resorts to silence as an answer. Jeno sighs, folding his arms behind his head. They stop in the hallway near the lockers. “It’s almost the end of school, you know? What’s happened now? We could be - I don’t know, picking strawberries at the farms together or some shit and living out our reclusive cottage lives until we have to pursue a career in the city so we can survive in this capitalistic dog-eat-dog society.” 

Jaemin pats him on the arm patronizingly. “Stress?”

“Shut up,” Jeno grumbles. He glances around the hallway before he taps Jaemin’s arm. “For real, though. What happened that put you two in some nuanced state of not arguing but still arguing?”

“I don’t know,” Jaemin murmurs, eyes downcast. “Renjun is unknowable.”

Jeno’s lips curl into a thoughtful frown. He brings his arms back down, placing them into the pockets of his cardigan. “No, I think you are.”

Jaemin snaps his head up. “What?”

“Oh my God, you two are worse than Donghyuck and Mark.” Jeno groans and rubs his temples. “For someone who catches onto things quickly, you sure are _slow_. I guess when you’re in too deep you’re not aware of it yourself, are you? You two hesitate with each other so damn much like you’re handling fragile objects and it’s giving me an aneurysm. ”

“You should really go check that out, then.” Jaemin’s wryness is received with a glare. 

“Look. Dude. I’m gonna say this once because I’m a generous person who's suffered _enough_. Renjun only does those things - like, giving you his scarf, constantly seeking you out and disabling your very frequent bouts of isolation and looking out for your too nice of an ass - not _literally_ \- bringing you tea and being so adamant in wanting you to live for yourself in this goddamn world - to _you_. He doesn’t do that to anyone else - at least, not to the extent he goes through when it comes to you. Don’t you even know what all of that means?”

Jaemin is becoming overwhelmed by the austere amount of information. He feels compelled to disagree, to pigeonhole all of those facets into the deep recesses of his mind and lurk around unresolved. But Jeno lets out a frustrated noise and takes Jaemin by the shoulders. 

“Don’t you get it already?” Jeno asks impatiently. “Jaemin, you make him soft.”

There’s a pressure building inside the back of his head. Jaemin averts his gaze and turns his head to the side, unable to formulate a response. Jeno heaves out a deep sigh. He’s tapping his foot as the seconds go by. Jaemin still doesn’t know what to say. Jeno picks up on his reluctance and pats his back.

“Think about that, okay? That’s all you’re getting out of me. If this is still not solved by next week, I’m telling Donghyuck to intervene and you _know_ how much he is the epitome of talk shit, get hit. And even though you’re not talking shit, you’re _being_ a little shit. Now c’mon. We’re gonna be late.” 

It’s during his free block that Jaemin chooses to nap somewhere else other than his little sunspot underneath the bleachers. Jaemin doesn’t want to be found, and knowing Jisung and his snitching tendencies, he doesn’t want Renjun to find him too. He doesn’t want to think about Jeno’s words either. He’s not sure why it was so unsettling to his core, but it continues to linger in the crevices of his mind, echoing: _You make him soft, you make him soft, you make him soft._

Jaemin ends up hiding in the counselling suite. He sits down on one of the plush chairs surrounding a rotund wooden table in the center of the suite, getting himself comfortable. But the last thing Jaemin expects out of all the places in the school is for Chenle to waltz right in, his attention diverted by the rubix cube he has in his hands, before he looks up and beams at the sight of Jaemin sitting at the chairs. 

Jaemin tries to school his expression into that of less dismay when Chenle eagerly sits across from him. His hair is now a vibrant shade of green. “Hey, Jaemin! Fancy meeting you here.” 

Chenle looks so out of place with his bright spirits clashing against the dull tones of the counselling suite. Jaemin wonders what kind of things there are to talk about for someone so constantly happy. “Uh - yeah. What’re you doing here?” 

“I’m waiting for my appointment with my counsellor.” Chenle grins. He swings his backpack around and places it down between his legs and leans back in his seat, fiddling with the rubix cube that he has already solved most sides of the tiles. Jaemin shifts in his seat, trying not to be curious and obvious in his discomfort around the younger. The discomfort seems to be one-sided when Chenle looks unaffected by the silence. 

“You look pretty tired,” Chenle offhandedly comments. “Not enough sun?”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

Chenle pauses and glances up at him at the sudden rise of defense. “Nothing. Just wondering. I mean, I’m not really talking about that giant burning star in the sky either. The sun can be many things. My mom says I'm hers.” 

Jaemin finds that a peculiar way of thinking. “Then what's yours?”

“Many things.” Chenle places the cube down and uses his fingers to list off things. “There's my parents, Jisung, red bean popsicles, jigsaw puzzles, soccer, and my dog Peanut! She’s a fluffy white maltese. I just gave the sun my own meaning, kinda like a homograph? I dunno. Anyways, so the sun can be many things. You know, the things that make you warm and happy and want to be near them for a very long time. What would be your sun, Jaemin?” 

The first thing that appears in his mind is a snagtooth smile. Jaemin coughs into his fist. “I’m - not exactly sure.” 

“That’s okay.” Chenle sagely nods. “The last time I asked Jisung the same question, he stammered for two minutes straight and didn’t even answer my question at the end. I think people are so used to their everyday lives that it’s kind of weird for them to really think about what makes them warm and happy.” 

“Did you think about it a lot, then?”

“You betcha. I’m known for thinking a lot. Like, a lot lot. It’s kinda why I go to Mr. Qian all the time since overthinking does weird stuff to your brain, but he teaches me exercises to handle it better. Wait, sorry. That was too much info. I talk a lot, don’t I? Sorry. It must be tiring to hear someone you don’t like babble on and on.”

Jaemin jolts, wondering if he’s heard wrong. He stares at Chenle, eyes going wide. “Wait - what? _What_?” 

“Yeah, it’s true, isn’t it?” Chenle shrugs. “I see the way you act around me and I see the way you act around other people, and there is a _huge_ difference. I mean, I told Jisung before but he called me a dummy because you’re really nice. And like, yeah. That’s true too. I don’t know. You don’t have to like me. I’m just glad we respect each other, you know?” 

Jaemin is rendered speechless. He doesn’t dislike Chenle. The younger boy was always thrumming with boundless energy, and as Jaemin takes his bright spirits in, Jaemin is struck with realization that despite Chenle’s happy-go-lucky disposition that has always been unsettling to him - perhaps all this time, that murky blob of a formless discomfiture in Jaemin’s chest has always been _envy_. 

Chenle didn’t rely on other people for the longevity of his happiness, but Jaemin did. Chenle wasn’t afraid to show his feelings without fearing he would lose people, but Jaemin did. Chenle didn’t need the help of others to shine and be effervescent, but Jaemin relied on others for the benefit of himself too much. Jaemin was light years away from being able to emulate that kind of genuine brightness, and he was scared that if he were to stand beside Chenle, the others would see right through Jaemin’s facade at the clear discrepancy of happiness between the two. 

But most of all, Chenle is far more braver than Jaemin when it comes to opening up his heart. Jaemin still lacks the fortitude to. But he doesn’t want to be lacking anymore. 

“It’s not - no, it’s not that, Chenle, it’s not,” Jaemin stumbles over his words as he talks fast, “I don’t dislike you. I _don’t_. I never once thought that. I’m sorry I ever came across as that. It’s just - I was envious. You’re always so happy and I didn’t know what to do about it. I didn’t know how you were always so optimistic and just so _bright_ and why _I_ couldn’t be like that. But I know now, that - it’s because you know what makes you warm and happy and you hold onto those things. You don’t run away.” 

Chenle leans forward in his seat, looking at him with curiosity. “Do _you_ run away?”

Jaemin snaps his mouth shut. He closes his eyes and thinks back to the conversation he had with Renjun that particular evening in the darkness of his room when he didn’t know where to start moving on; the space between their hands, the rusty glow that cast them in a liminal light, the silence that spoke measures his own voice could never fill, the look in Renjun’s eyes that Jaemin didn’t have the courage to seek the truth of. “I’ve always believed that if I don’t acknowledge something, then it would simply go away.”

Chenle tilts his head. “How’s that working out for you?”

Jaemin heaves out a wry laugh. “Not really great.” 

Chenle hums. He stands up from his seat and goes over to sit beside Jaemin, leaning on the chair arm. “Well, I’m glad to hear that you don’t actually hate my guts. You’re just a bit of a troubled guy, huh?” 

He pats Jaemin on the shoulder. “Mr. Qian always tells me that every person goes through something that changes them in a way that they could never go back to the person they once were. But there’s a lot of stubborn hope in the human heart. So I guess rather than running away, maybe you can come to love who you’re becoming instead so you can have the strength to face what you’re not acknowledging. That can make you warm and happy too, don’t you think?”

Jaemin lets the introspection sink in. He’s never thought about building a home inside of himself. To live in the eyes of others has made him forgotten what it feels like to live comfortably within his own skin, and never once has he thought about rebuilding that safe haven until now. “Are you sure you’re only a year younger than me, Chenle?”

“Well, I’ve been told I’ve got an old soul. Whatever that means.” Chenle grins and fails to dodge Jaemin’s grabby hands for his cheeks. Chenle gripes over the lack of autonomy over his own face. “Aw man, I _knew_ you were gonna do that.”

Jaemin laughs and lets go of his cheeks. At the same time, one of the office doors open and a young man steps out, greeting them with a warm smile as he calls Chenle’s name. Jaemin assumes him to be Mr. Qian. Chenle perks up and grabs his rubix cube and backpack before he stands up from his seat. “See you later, Jaemin. Good luck with whatever it is!” 

“I - hey,” Jaemin says, catching the younger boy’s sleeve. “Thank you. And you don’t talk a lot. You talk just about right, Chenle. You have a good heart.” 

That earns him a bright smile. “So do you.”

Chenle waves Jaemin farewell before he follows after Mr. Qian, striking up an effortless conversation with him. Jaemin looks down at his hands. He thinks about Renjun and wonders if they can collide the space that divides them. 

 

 

 

Another day passes. Jaemin steeps in his rumination over Chenle and Jeno’s words. He ignores the ghost that’s been stuck in a stalemate of vanishing incompletely. He pretends it’s not there like he pretends a lot of things aren’t.

The skates are no longer on the Item of the Month wall. They’ve been relocated to the display windows, placed alongside other vintage and peculiar novelties that have attracted common attention from passersby and regular customers. Jaemin misses it being in his plain sight, but he supposes that it wasn’t good for his heart to have it so near him, evoking such disarrayed warmth that throws him offbeat. 

But the ease of routine offers him a glimpse of distraction. Jaemin pieces together a simple puzzle piece to place in a frame for display and thinks about how he can do the same with his own heart too.

When Satara returns from her lunch break, she resumes her task of reorganizing the fragile objects by the fine china. Jaemin notices her handling a snow globe that provokes the memory of Renjun holding the paperweight in his hand that night, markedly fixated on the blue flowers that mingled with the orange sky in the crystal. Jaemin wonders if Renjun happens to know what kind they are. Maybe that’s why he reacted the way he did. Jaemin figures he’d ask about it. 

“You don’t know?” Satara asks, nonplussed as she pauses in the middle of making space for a gold-rimmed cup in the shelves. “And here I thought you bought it knowing what they are!”

“You could say I’m an impulsive buyer.”

Satara fondly shakes her head. She places the cup down and dusts off her hands. “They’re forget-me-nots.”

Jaemin stares at her as the world begins to tilt. He asks despite the obvious, “What do they mean?” 

“The name says it all, doesn’t it? You can interpret in a few ways. A memory that must never be erased and something worth remembering. To not be forgotten by their friends, their families,” Satara says with a smile, “and their lovers.” 

_Besides, a lot of misunderstandings can be solved if you just be honest._

“Oh.” Jaemin blinks. He glances down at the ground before he looks at his hands, the same hands that have conducted his own loneliness. Jeno’s voice crawls inside his ears, reminding him again and again about the one thing he’s been deceiving himself from believing in order to protect himself. And Jaemin gets it now. He understands now. Everything clicks into place like the puzzle piece in a frame. 

Jaemin thinks about Renjun’s small but momentous acts of kindness hidden beneath a facade of sarcasm; how Renjun has never once denied him a place of comfort and a sense of belonging; about Renjun’s paint-stained fingers that matched his birthmark and how warm it felt to have his fingers thread through Jaemin’s hair and to have strongly grasped Jaemin’s hand after the cold void those skates have left behind. He thinks about how Renjun had already given away bits and pieces of himself to Jaemin to keep that Jaemin never noticed; how Renjun opens up his heart and shares with him his highests and his lowests and his fears that cannot be seen in the confidence he carries in the day. 

All this time of longing to reach for Renjun wasn’t because _he_ was too far away but because it was Jaemin. _Jaemin_ is the one who had always been too far. _Jaemin_ is the one who had always been unreachable because _he_ was the one who stayed within his own walls, too scared to reach out to the boy who sees right through him and does so much for him but never admits to it. _Jaemin_ is the one who never once crossed the inviting space between them to take Renjun's hand. 

And whenever he is so close to taking that leap of faith, Jaemin steps back. He runs away again. He fears over and over again that he would merely grasp at the threadbare strings of something that would only be ephemeral and no longer meaningful, because forever was an urban legend and nothing lasts. Jaemin was putting slabs upon slabs of concrete over his heart to protect it from the very day he’d watch Renjun leave town and never look back. But Jaemin’s never realized how that must have looked like from the outside, to watch Jaemin do something so uncharacteristically intimate and tender only to withdraw from its promise and leave it unanswered.

_It’s too early for a goodbye gift, isn’t it?_

Renjun has also yearned, too, for an eternal orange sky. 

“I’m an idiot,” Jaemin whispers. Satara regards him with a skeptic look. Jaemin doesn’t know what expression he’s wearing that makes her sigh in resignation. 

“Oh, you’ve got that face again.” She shakes her head and puts her hand out. “You are very fortunate that you are my favourite. Jungwoo is coming to a very close second, though. C’mon, hand the apron over, now. Go on and do whatever you need to do, but this is the last time I’m letting you skip out on work.” 

Jaemin quickly unties the knot behind him and hands the apron over, giving her a grateful hug before he heads to the backroom to grab his things. Jungwoo watches him curiously before sending him a thumbs-up as clueless encouragement that starts Jaemin into a laugh. 

Jaemin leaves the thrift shop and runs down the street. This time, he runs towards instead of away. He runs to Renjun like Renjun has done to him in the past. Underneath the peach-streaked sky of the tender springtime, the trail of zelkova trees singing in windy whispers and standing dormant in his wake, Jaemin runs down the familiar meandering street with the wind whipping across his face. He runs past the bus stop, the bakery, the produce markets and bookstores, the old bungalow house that no longer speaks to him, and the gate that was the frontispiece to Chinatown. 

He doesn’t stop running even as he approaches the shophouse, rushing into the opened doors, greeted by the earthly incense and an attainable sense of belonging. He sees Renjun seated behind the counter, polishing the glass of a small handheld vanity mirror with golden curlicues around the handle. Renjun doesn’t look up until Jaemin makes his way to the front counter. His sudden appearance startles Renjun into almost toppling over his chair, but all the words Jaemin had readily wanted to speak is suddenly all gone. 

He hears white noise. He hears his own hammering heart and heavy breaths. Renjun’s mouth moves in question but Jaemin can’t hear his words. Before Renjun can utter another word, Jaemin finally finds his voice and bluntly asks him, “Why didn’t you tell me?” 

Renjun stares at him, bewildered at first, before his expression morphs into one he often dons when he’s had enough of stupid questions. Something in his eyes shutters, filtering out the glow with solemnity, and Renjun turns around and rings the bell, calling for his mother from the back to take over him. 

“Wait outside,” Renjun instructs. 

Jaemin blinks. He nods stiffly and heads back outside, his mind blank. He stands underneath the small awning, watching the townsfolk breeze past him in bicycles and old jalopies. A parade of children wearing uniforms followed after their teacher across the street. There’s a Hong Kong Style Cafe bustling with loud laughter, settled between a herbal shop and a hair salon. He hears the door close behind him. Renjun stands close to the side. There is a distance between them that Jaemin doesn’t like. 

“Usually I’m the one finding you,” Renjun says dryly. 

“Renjun.” Finally touching upon this topic felt scary, like peeling away the layers to some vulnerable, child-like, uncertain, fragile place. “Why - didn’t you tell me?” 

“Tell you what?” Renjun replies. There’s a hardened edge to his voice. Defensive. 

“About this. About _me_ \- how you feel about me. About everything. I don’t know.” 

“What was the point?” Jaemin starts at the harshness of Renjun’s tone, his vehemency unyielding. “You gave me all these mixed signals that I’m frankly tired of trying to figure out. You acted as though I was already gone, as though all the time we had left wasn’t good enough to even _try_ , but so fucking what if I’m leaving soon? So what if we all have is _now_? Why not make the best of it, then, insteading of wasting our time mourning over something that hasn’t even happened yet? What was I supposed to do when you were so clear on wanting to leave things the way they were?”

“Renjun, I - “

“No. I’ve had enough so listen to me, Jaemin. I’m still _here_.” Renjun briskly crosses the space between them and punctuates each word with an angry finger jabbed to Jaemin’s chest. “I’m still _here_. I’m not _gone_ yet. I’m not a ghost, I’m not a pipedream, and I’m _nothing_ like your mother. Can’t you see that, Jaemin? Can’t you see _me_?” 

Jaemin does. He sees Renjun, tangible and concrete before him. He sees the anger and the hurt and the infinite warmth in his golden heart that was surfacing beyond the veneer of a self-sufficient boy who Jaemin once thought relied on words more than the hands but merely relied on both. Renjun is not unknowable. Renjun is not a puzzling mystery meant to be dissected underneath heaven’s eye. Renjun is merely a simple boy who merely wants a simple life with the planets and the unknown inhabiting the other world above theirs. 

But most of all, he sees love, teeming in the curlicues of light in his eyes that Jaemin had been too scared to acknowledge this whole time - too blinded by his own fears and doubt because it was unimaginable, unbelievable, unfathomable to ever think that Renjun could love somebody as incomplete as him. 

Renjun is right. All this time, Jaemin had been looking for love in the places he’d lost it, when love had always been in front of him. 

His mind wanders to Renjun’s fingers stained black and then orange and pink. Renjun has turned his childhood disillusionment into something hopeful like the regrowth of spring, washing away the summer blues and replacing it with memories stained green. The masks are breaking. Jaemin still fears the unknown, the unpredictability, but he doesn’t want to be scared anymore. Jaemin will displace his fears and doubts with courage, and make space for the love he’s secretly carried in the depths of his heart, and face the truth of what the stars have been trying to tell him.

“Renjun,” Jaemin says. “Take me skating.” 

Renjun stares at him, stunned but all the more confused, as he takes a step back. “What?”

Jaemin keeps his clenched fists down by his sides. “You said you don’t understand what I want. So I’m telling you what I want. I want to go skating with you. I want to go skating with you and make new memories with you at the ice rink. I want to continue to make new memories with you. I want to do a lot of things with you. I want to do everything with you. I was scared for a lot of things and I’ve always, _always_ wanted you to stay, but you have a _dream_. Renjun, the universe - it’s out there, waiting for you to discover more of its secrets. How could I let my feelings tie you down?” 

He’s met with silence. Renjun looks at him in astonishment, as though he was trying to decipher an old script, as though he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. Jaemin’s heart pounds violently against his chest, threatening to lurch through his throat; the blood rushes up to his face and he forces himself to stay rooted in his spot no matter how much he wants to hide. 

“What,” Renjun slowly begins, “feelings?” 

With butterflies in his stomach and his head buzzing with possibilities, Jaemin takes that leap of faith and whispers, “Love.” 

Renjun sucks in a deep breath. The word lingers soundlessly, blending in with the singing wind that brushes past them in the uninhibited sounds of town. There is disbelief scrawled all over Renjun’s expression, but even then, his eyes seem glossy in the backdrop of the sunlit timber. He’s wringing the sleeves of his sweater when he finally speaks, his voice low, “Are you being serious right now?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You have a recurrent defense mechanism that involves making light of severe matters.” 

“I’m serious, Renjun.” Jaemin smiles behind a shaking hand. “You make me warm and so, so happy.”

And when he looks into Renjun’s eyes, everything else seems to simplify. And maybe he didn’t see stars, or galaxies, or the entire inscrutable universe in them, but rather, he saw dimensions - things Jaemin have fallen in love with before through time and space and different planes, and the parallels in Renjun’s eyes are one of the things that Jaemin has fallen in love with too.

Renjun lets out an incredulous laugh, running a hand over his face in disbelief. “You sappy bastard.” 

And then Renjun is suddenly wrapping his arms around Jaemin, burying his face into Jaemin’s neck that surprises him into stillness, because Renjun has never made the first move before. His breath ghosts against his skin, leaving behind a trail of goosebumps like the scattered petals along the sidewalk from a cherry blossom tree. It's as if space and time became the finest point imaginable, as if time collapsed into one tiny speck and exploded at light speed. It's as if Jaemin’s universe begins and ends with Renjun. 

“I’m sorry,” Jaemin murmurs into his hair. 

“Don’t be. You wouldn’t tie me down,” Renjun says. “I knew you weren’t going to keep me waiting for too long, after all.”

Jaemin huffs out a single laugh and holds Renjun tighter. When his laughter dims and turns into the trembling of his shoulders, Renjun gently cards his fingers through Jaemin’s hair in knowing comfort - a sensitivity they shared between each other like electricity or a nimbus of light. And this time, Renjun does not feel far away. This time, Renjun is close to him, and is the only one who can make him feel endlessly warm and endlessly in love.

To Jaemin, the sea by the pier, the sun, and the moon are all unreachable things he’s grown to accept and live with. But as he stands there, arms wrapped around the boy he loves, Jaemin realizes that the north star isn’t so far beyond his reach as he initially thought after all.

v.

“Thank _fucking_ Jesus,” Jeno yells into the sky as he throws his hands up victoriously in the air. “New Xbox here I finally come, baby! Bring on the cash, losers!”

Jaemin watches on with amusement as Donghyuck aggressively takes out his wallet and fishes out a poor stack of bills to throw at Jeno’s face, unfortunately spreading cash cooties across his auspicious nose, while Mark sadly rummages through his pockets for a paltry amount of change and a crumpled, moderate amount of bills to hand over. Jeno, on the other hand, is so ecstatic over his win, that he sticks his tongue out at Donghyuck and taunts him as he shoves the money down the pockets of his sweatpants.

Renjun has his arms crossed, looking borderline murderous. “Betting on someone’s _happiness_ , huh? Hyuck?” 

“Don’t call me out,” Donghyuck complains. “Who can say no to extra cash? We need to survive in this capitalist world!”

“I didn’t think we were that obvious,” Jaemin butts in with a frown. 

Donghyuck scoffs. “Come on, dude. I knew you were bluffing the first time you said everyone in this town was too prissy and too asshole-y for your taste. Renjun was especially easy, always going on and on about you - ‘Jaemin’ this, ‘Jaemin’ that, ‘Jaemin’ everything! Even when he was pissed he always somehow managed to bring you into the conversation. He was like a broken record. What a waste of Vine time.” 

When Jaemin looks over to Renjun, Renjun was breaking off into a sprint to chase Donghyuck across the basketball court. Jeno cheers and subsequently joins in on the witchhunt, attacking Donghyuck with tickles when Renjun manages to capture Donghyuck into a headlock. Jaemin sits down on the asphalt ground as soon as the half-hearted punishment ends, and the three of them start a basketball match. Mark sits beside him with the same amused look on his face. 

“Congrats?” Mark pats him on the shoulder rather awkwardly. 

Jaemin laughs. “This feels like deja vu.”

“Dude. Tell me about it.”

Jaemin smiles, watching as Renjun and Donghyuck conspire a plan behind Jeno’s back as he succeeds in doing a layup. Mark watches the scene unfurl before him quietly as well, tapping a finger against his knee. Jaemin says, “I’m going to miss this a lot. Won’t you?”

Mark hums thoughtfully. “Yeah, me too.” Mark glances at Jaemin and alternates his gaze between him and the other three playing around on the basketball court, and after a few seconds of silent inquiry, his eyes light up as though he’s caught on to what Jaemin was insinuating. He scratches his cheek. “Not to go on a total whim here, but you do know that FaceTime exists, right? WhatsApp? WeChat? KakaoTalk?” 

“Of course.” Jaemin admits, embarrassed. “But it won’t be the same.”

“Dude. You’re sweet but look - here.” Mark rummages for his phone and scrolls through his messages, going on an excited ramble as he talks about his friends. “Lucas sent me a dozen pictures of the same bunny he saw near a park yesterday and kept yelling about how cute it was. He’s, like, doing some honours degree in international affairs and he _still_ finds the time to spam me in the middle of the night. Oh, and here’s Yerim going on and on about a new book she _actually_ likes. She’s interning at a literary magazine too. Makes me feel like I could be doing more with my life but to each their own - for now, I guess. After travelling, maybe I’ll do something in writing. I dunno.”

Jaemin goes cross-eyed from trying to look at the screen of Mark’s phone shoved in front of him. When Mark puts his phone back into his pocket, he says, “See? We still keep in contact despite being miles apart. But man, Renjun _is_ right. You really don’t have faith in us.”

“That’s not true,” says Jaemin. Mark raises a brow and Jaemin feels his own face heat up. He brings his knees to his chest and tucks his chin in. “Change is just scary. That’s all.” 

Mark blinks. He presses his lips down in thought. “I guess we’re pretty similar, huh?” 

Jaemin glances at him before his attention is brought to the court when Donghyuck yells at them to join in on the game already. “But change is necessary to grow, don’t you think?” Mark says as he gets up from the ground, dusting off the back of his shorts. Jaemin’s eyes follows his movement, and as Mark turns around, the sun ricochets against his dark hair and eclipses half of his face. 

“And, you know. It’s gonna take more than distance to get rid of us because - ” Mark rolls up his sleeve and points at the rainbow bracelet on his wrist, a giant grin on his face. “We’re all tied to each other for life, now, thanks to you.”

Jaemin’s eyes widen in surprise. He watches as Mark runs off to the court, calling dibs to be a part of Jeno’s team. There’s a warmth in his chest that even the sun cannot imitate. 

He sits there, watching the sunbeams dance around the court, and Jaemin realizes that he has wasted too much of his time wishing and wanting and missing when he’s never lost his friends in the first place. Maybe Jaemin wasn’t Pluto, all this time. Maybe he was also a star that was merely burned out and his friends were the neighbouring massive stars helping Jaemin burn bright and alive again in the sky. 

It doesn’t matter if there won’t be any more arcade runs and basketball matches underneath the grueling sun or peach lemonade and adventures through the woodlands, because Jaemin will still have them in his life no matter far apart they are, and that is enough. Jaemin will cherish all the time he has left with them so that, when they leave, the silence that replaces them will be just as warm and bright as their laughter. 

“Come on, you slowpoke!” Donghyuck exclaims and beckons him over. Renjun is smiling at him, his eyes catching the sunlight. They’re waiting for him. 

Jaemin stands up from the ground, feeling his mouth stretch into a grin. He runs towards them and calls for a new game. The sun is delicately light on his back.

iv.

The weather grows warmer as summer almost arrives, and the sunshine brings glow to the foliage and to every garland of bloom. What a strange thing it is to be alive underneath the orchids and apple trees.

Jaemin’s never seen Renjun cry before, but he sees him cry when he tells his mother. Ms. Huang may have a cold exterior but her sharp, unadorned parlance was one of her many ways of expressing affection. 

“You think I don’t know what happens in my own house?” She lightly taps a knuckle against Renjun’s forehead before she cradles his face in her hands. “I may have grown up in a heartless place but that does not mean I cannot read and understand your hearts. Call it a mother’s intuition. I know when my son’s in love.” Ms. Huang glances at Jaemin, a knowing smile on her face. “And I know love when I see it.” 

Ms. Huang says she’s lived long enough to have abandoned her former prejudices that she had attained from growing up in a conservative society. She also says that she knows how narrow-minded men can be, so if Renjun’s father has problem, than he can take the problem up with her first. Jaemin always had utmost respect for Ms. Huang, but after that, his respect for her undoubtedly tripled. 

The heart of town bustles with lively energy from the townsfolk in anticipation for the opening fairs and annual festivities, such as pie eating contests and a chance to win free baskets of freshly picked fruits and vegetables. Jaemin attends one of the many seasonal carnivals with Renjun, where they ate clouds of cotton candy and sticky caramel apples. Jaemin also wins a cute teddy bear from one of the fair games after seven (embarrassing) failed attempts. He gives it to Renjun. 

Jaemin also manages to catch up with his schoolwork with the help of Jeno’s astuteness and Renjun’s natural smarts. Donghyuck was also quick on the uptake and taught him new concepts in such a simplified way that Jaemin would rather have him as his teacher than the school staff, and Mark’s expertise was especially helpful in the old literature and writing portion of his English class. Needless to say, Jaemin thinks he’s on the right track for graduation eligibility.

His father has been spending a lot of time looking for new places to settle in too. They’d eat dinner together to try and catch up when his father manages to take some time off. His father was a quiet man, though, and small talk over the dinner table would more often be stifling than comforting. Despite being still awkward and clumsy around each other, there are times where Jaemin would fall asleep on the couch out of habit and wake up to a blanket covering him, and his father would converse more through sticky notes when he’s too busy working back-to-back to catch Jaemin in the morning. 

Getting to know his father again felt surreal; Jaemin has forgotten how much his father likes folk music and the sudden resurgence of CD’s appearing in an unruly stack on the coffee table was a strange but happy occurrence to wake up to in the morning. 

The days go by relatively the same but different and Jaemin can feel it in his bones - the change of atmosphere in his home that speaks of reassurance despite the bad days, and his developing sense of self-acceptance that makes him, bit by bit, fall in love with who he is starting to become. There are times where sleeplessness, his long-time friend, comes back to plague him when he feels off-kilter, letting the ugly thoughts roll around in his head that keeps him up at night for it has become more of a habit, of a muscle memory, than a problem, but it will not extinguish the hope in his heart. He believes this will be something he, too, can almost get over. 

Almost is a big word but Jaemin can feel it everywhere. Almost happy. Almost strong. Almost changed. Almost, but not quite there. Not yet. Soon, maybe. It’ll take him years, decades, maybe more - who knows - to heal. But that’s okay, because he is surrounded by people who love him and want him. Jaemin will continue to live despite all his setbacks and he will learn to live for himself. 

His progress becomes noticeable. When Jaemin passes by the bakery near closing time and receives his usual box of free egg tarts, Yuta smiles at him and comments, “Not to be a total stranger, but you look like you’ve laid off the coffee and actually gotten some rest.”

Jaemin smiles back. “You could say that.”

Jaemin remembers to let Donghyuck about the matter that’s been stored in the back of his head too. It was during one of their rare hangouts where it was merely the two of them that he brings it up as they’re heading to one of the bubble tea shops. “You can call me Nana again. I don’t mind.”

“You sure?” Donghyuck looks at him quizzically.

“Yeah.” Jaemin smiles. “It’s got a nice tune to it when you say it.”

Donghyuck beams and throws an arm around his shoulder. “I don’t care what anyone says. You’re the sappiest ass on this earth and I love you for it.”

From picking strawberries at the farms together as a group and eating them afterwards at the picnic table of Donghyuck’s backyard; to having unfair basketball matches; to fooling around in the woodlands, climbing trees before age could impair their reach; to listening to Renjun ramble on about the star catalogue and how wishing upon shooting stars originated from Ptolemy back in ancient Greece to his eccentric alien conspiracies - Jaemin feels a lot closer to the sky than he’s ever been. But there’s something else Jaemin has still yet to do that he thinks he’s finally ready for.

One night, Jaemin takes the shoebox out of his closet. He brings it with him as he sits on his bed, placing the shoebox on top of his lap. He stares at it, his heart beating in a blank syncopation in his ears, but his hands tremor. He closes his eyes. There is nothing waiting for him in the box.

When he takes off the lid, he slowly opens his eyes. Jaemin finds an empty bottle of perfume that smells distantly of tuberose, and a few family photos and polaroids of when Jaemin was still a toddler. Jaemin picks up a creased photo of a woman holding the hand of a little boy where both of them were smiling. The woman had long black hair. Her hand looked particularly warm. The little boy had a dappy smile on his rosy-cheeked face. Mother and son. They have the same eyes. 

And when Jaemin looks up at the ghost lingering in the corner of his room, blending in with the moonlight cascading through his window, the blurry-faced ghost is no longer blurry-faced. Jaemin sees the same face from the photo in his hands looking back at him from the corner now, smiling at him in the same manner she did before she left. His chest aches. Jaemin hasn’t seen her face in so long. 

The ghost moves. She’s sitting beside him on his bed now, looking at him as though he was still a child. But she is a fragment of his past that has followed him all the way out of his dreams. And Jaemin has already made it clear to himself that he will leave his mother in the past without looking back even if he didn’t receive any closure; he will be able to talk and think about her without the papercuts in his heart hurting like a gunshot; and he will be able to stop noticing the pain and notice the little things that make him feel afloat instead. Or maybe the pain won’t ever be gone but he’ll learn to live with it. 

“I’m going to let you go,” Jaemin talks to her, to himself, to confirm it to the universe that never gave him the answers he wanted, and to bring it into existence. “For good.”

Jaemin looks at the photo in his hands. He crumples it. He tears the other photos apart. Jaemin gets up and takes the shoebox out into kitchen and throws it all away into the recycle, watching the torn pieces flutter into the bin. When he comes back to his room, she is still there. He sits down beside her again. Her smile seems a little sad. He says goodbye this time. Jaemin stays there with the ghost until he falls asleep with wet cheeks. 

When morning comes in diffused light and Jaemin wakes up, the ghost is gone.

iii.

The sky is still bright even in the late afternoon. As soon as Jaemin checked that it was going to be a twenty minute wait for the bus from school, they ended up walking to Renjun’s stop instead. Jaemin listens to Renjun ramble on about new space explorations all the way there with their arms linked together, and while the distance between the bus stops are rather far, the speed of time was left forgotten between their immersion with each other.

When Renjun pauses to catch his breath, Jaemin takes the opportunity to interrupt and ask the question out of curiosity that’s been collecting dust in the back of his mind for a while now. “Hey, Renjun. When did you start liking me?”

Renjun scrunches up his face in displeasure. “You just saved yourself another tangent about how humankind is going to destroy Mars before they can even plant trees there from me. Jaemin, you’re seriously going to pry that out of me right now?”

“Well. We’ve got - “ Jaemin checks his phone for the calendar. “A month and four days until our graduation. Might as well take the time we have left to ask how you fell for my dazzling personality and irresistible charms!”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

Jaemin grins and swings their arms around, humming the elevator song as he waits for Renjun’s reply. A contemplative silence floats over them and Jaemin takes the time to ponder over the right timing to let Renjun know about what his father has finally decided on. 

“You were interesting,” Renjun finally answers. His stoicism catches Jaemin off guard and makes him more flustered than Renjun himself. “You had this weird look in your eyes whenever you watched other people, like you wandered off the edge of the earth. And you were too happy. No one’s ever that happy.” 

“Except for Chenle.”

Renjun nods. “Except for Chenle.”

“So you’ve been watching me the whole time?”

“ _No._ ”

Jaemin laughs at his immediate denial. He lets out a soft sigh as he takes in the skies. “That’s okay. If it’s worth anything, your Peppa the Pig t-shirts were very eye-catching. Then I got to know you better. You have a real knack for changing people’s perspective, you know that?” 

Renjun’s mouth twitches, holding back a smile. “You seem to be talking about yourself.”

Jaemin blinks. The bus stop comes into view. Renjun withdraws his arm and hurries in front, embarrassed, and Jaemin can tell he’s trying not to show it. Jaemin slows to a gradual halt as he watches Renjun trek ahead. When he looks up, he wonders if the inside of his mouth would turn orange if he were to swallow the sky. 

“Hey, Renjun,” he calls after him, and Renjun stops and turns around. There’s a line at the bus stop that grows with each passing minute. 

“What?”

“You know, Seoul is only a two-hour flight from Jilin.” 

“How is that relevant right now?” 

Jaemin smiles and tucks his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “My dad’s got relatives in Seoul. He said they’d be able to help us when we settle there. It’s been a while since he’s seen his side of the family. Plus, there’s nothing here worth staying for anymore after I’m done school. Might as well start fresh somewhere else.” He glances up at the cirrus clouds. “I’ve always wondered how the sky over there looks like.” 

Renjun’s gaze does not falter, but it does take him a moment for Jaemin’s words to sink in and click into a completion of understanding. Renjun shifts in his stance, his eyes wide and clear as daylight. “You’re shitting me.” 

“Your potty mouth never ceases to amaze me. But yes,” Jaemin sighs fondly, an uncontainable grin spreading across his face that makes his cheeks hurt. “I shit you not.”

Jaemin hears the low rumble of the bus afar from behind him. The warmth in his chest is as warm as the sky’s passing blush and the yolk-like sun, golden like the glow of a topaz that sloughed light across the zelkova trees and variegated cape cod houses. The wind cuts across them as the bus rushes past them in a blur, eclipsing them in a shadow that seemed to linger for more than a lifetime when Renjun approaches him, takes him by the face, and kisses him on the mouth. 

Stunned, Jaemin stands there, motionless, feeling his entire body flush red at the touch of Renjun’s lips against his. It was as though the backdrop of time and place had been eliminated, forgotten and faded, so that it was just the two of them standing against a blankness. Before Jaemin can even reciprocate the gentle kiss, Renjun is already pulling away, his own face a pretty pink. 

“Uh - I, um - well, that was - um,” Jaemin stammers, his mind short-circuiting. “Wow.” 

Renjun clears his throat into a fist. “Try again and maybe you’ll say something intelligent.” 

“Ha. _Hilarious_.” Jaemin looks over to the bus stop and finds it empty. “Oh, we missed the bus. Gosh _darn_ it, that sure _sucks_ after we walked all the way here. Hey, can you do that again?” 

Renjun shoves him away before bringing him back down for a kiss, but they end up bursting out into giddy laughter instead. Jaemin’s mouth lingers of the colour orange and the staccato of his heart is uncontrollable, but he supposes that Renjun has always been the conductor of his heartbeat.

ii.

Renjun lets Jaemin know that he called his sister to let her know about his graduation and the possibilities of visiting Guangzhou since he’ll be in country. Renjun named it the most awkward and uncomfortable phone call he’s ever made in his entire eighteen years of life, but he doesn't regret it. Jaemin smiles and thinks that it’s nice that everyone’s starting to change.

Satara and the rest of the old volunteers gives Jaemin a box of assorted chocolates as a congratulatory gift for his upcoming graduation before taking turns to smooch him on the cheeks. Jungwoo lunges forward with a lot more force than Jaemin expected and smothers him with a face full of kisses. Jaemin doesn't think he's ever gotten that much affection from a single person in his whole lifetime. It reminds Jaemin to do the same to Renjun. 

He watches his surroundings blur as his father drives past town in the early evening, where the sun begins to melt behind the mountains. The suit Jaemin is wearing feels stiff and uncomfortable. The graduation gown feels like a dream on him. He listens to his father sing quietly along to the radio. His father hasn’t sang for a long time. 

“Big day today,” his father says. “How do you feel?”

Jaemin turns his head from the window and smiles at him. “Ready.”

Once they arrive at the pier, the both of them get out of the car and make their way down the sidewalk, heading towards the boardwalk and then the walkway where he notices the same gown-clad figures near the railings. While walking, he spots a sprout of flowers between the cracks of the sidewalk. Jaemin bends down, plucks a snowcap daisy out from its cluster among the dewy grass, and tucks it in his cap so that it sticks out near his ear. He smiles to himself.

As soon as they arrive at the pier, the others immediately spot him. Jeno doesn't waste a single second when he tackles him into a hug, picks him up, and spins him around. 

“Nice to see you too, Jeno,” Jaemin laughs, although he stumbles dizzily once Jeno puts him down. Mark claps him on the back. 

“Can you believe he's just wearing pajamas under there?” Donghyuck asks. “I should've done the same. Like, no one's gonna _see_ my suit anyways.”

“They _are_ going to see your hideous shoes, though.” Renjun points at Donghyuck's loafers. 

“Shut off!”

“You couldn't decide between fuck off and shut up, huh?”

While Mark is wheezing into Jeno's shoulder, Jaemin perks up and introduces his father to them. His father's awkward attempts to shake their hands was an amusing sight, and while they all received him with great enthusiasm, Mark suddenly looked nervous around his father's presence. Jaemin brightly greets Mark's grandpa, however, when he comes shuffling by with a serene smile on his face and whisks Jaemin’s father away to talk. Jaemin spots Ms. Huang fussing over her husband’s tie, and to the side, Jisung and Chenle talking amongst themselves near the railing. When Chenle notices him, he beams and waves at him. Jaemin smiles and waves back. 

Jaenin looks to his left when he feels something warm press against his arm. Renjun reaches up and lightly runs a thumb over the petals of the daisy that was sticking out from his cap. “Whimsical.”

His face warms. “Big day,” is all Jaemin can say. 

“Not really. We're just sitting for two hours listening to a bunch of boring speeches and waiting for our names to be called so we can get a piece of paper.” Renjun shrugs. A grin spreads across his face. “But yeah. Big day.”

Later on, they all huddle together for pictures close to the sea. Jaemin lets his father wear his graduation cap for their photos. The warm sun gets in his eyes and he comes out squinting in the photos. The sea seems to ripple from their all their laughter. Jaemin watches Donghyuck smother Mark’s face with kisses that looked to be more of a tactic to embarrass, but it seems as though everyone else has already become accustomed to their endearingly childish antics. 

When it’s the Huang’s turn for a family photo, Ms. Huang insists for Jaemin to be in it too. Ms. Huang positions him right beside Renjun and says, “You’ve already been part of the family since the very moment you stepped into our house.” Then she shrugs. “And I guess because you are also dating my son. Even better. No grandchildren!”

Chenle hoots. Jeno scrunches up his face because he’s allergic to anything romantic. Mr. Huang looks like he’d rather be anywhere but there. Renjun grits out, “ _Ma_ , stop talking.” 

Jaemin laughs until his stomach hurts. 

Once it nears the time of the ceremony, they all begin to head out. Jaemin stays for a moment, watching the way heaven collides with the earth in the far distance. Dark blue was beginning to scatter across the soft red sky; Jaemin looks at how the light leaks through the surface of the waters, bright against the canvas of clouds that look like candy floss. The dog days are over, but he will always carry this memory of heartwarming laughter in a sun-spooled town in his heart. 

“Jaemin,” Renjun calls. “Are you coming?” 

Jaemin looks over his shoulder. Everyone he needs is there. He smiles. 

“Yeah.”

i.

Jaemin watches all kinds of people in various shapes, ages, colours, and sizes skate around in the ice rink of the domed arena that was a four hour bus ride from the center of town. He assumed a lot of people would be at the rink. Summer greeted them all with an inclement heatwave.

“Jesus Christ,” Renjun mumbles as he looks at the blades of the skates. “I could kill somebody with these. How the fuck can this be a leisure sport?”

Jaemin grins. As soon as he finishes tying his own skates, he helps Renjun with his, tightly fastening the laces for optimal ankle support. Renjun gets up from the bench and wobbles around like a clumsy penguin. Jaemin glances down at the skates. It’s been a long time; being in the same skating arena his mother took him to as a child was disorientating as it was nostalgic, but Jaemin also feels that there is something meaningful behind such a gesture. He expected there to be an indescribable longing today, but all he feels is a distant content. A sort of fulfillment. 

“Holy shit,” Renjun whispers blankly, as though he’s come to a horrific realization. “Please don’t let me break a leg or something. Or at least don’t let me die. I still have to finish packing up my things.”

“You’re not gonna break a leg.” Jaemin laughs as he takes Renjun’s arm and redirects him towards the ice rink. “Just don’t, I dunno - crash into the window? Mind you, I haven’t skated for over ten years, so I’m gonna be rusty.”

The image of Renjun’s bedroom becoming full of packed suitcases and boxes leaves him a little sad. He was leaving in two months, then it would be Jeno, Mark, and Donghyuck’s turn, and Jaemin would be leaving in the beginning of September. But Jaemin finds that it’s okay. He has Jisung and Chenle and maybe Jungwoo to annoy, and he’ll be right behind the others in pursuing his own purpose to live on the other side of the world. 

They stand at the entrance of the ice rink. The sharp bite of the skates skidding across ice fills the air in a pleasant cacophony, mingling with laughter and shrieks. Jaemin’s heart is ricocheting against his chest. 

Every step forward is a slip backwards. But Jaemin thinks that a step backwards is necessary to keep moving forward, forward, and forward.

“Well,” Renjun says. He extends his hand towards him. “Shall we?”

Jaemin glances down at Renjun’s hand and takes it. They intertwine their fingers. Renjun smiles brightly at him, eyes crinkling whenever something makes him happy enough, and Jaemin feels the world around him soften. The warmest light, Jaemin finds, is this hand in his. But then he realizes something else that he’s failed to notice until now and it brings the largest smile on Jaemin’s face. 

Renjun’s hand really can be soft and calloused at the same time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that's it folks !!! thank u so much for reading this fic & staying tuned despite its long length TT it really means a lot to me & i super appreciate it so so much!!! ( ´﹀` ) <3 i hope u all liked it !
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/suncygnus) | [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/sunsprite)


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